Innocence Lost
by blackwingedheaven
Summary: A Skyrim fanfiction following the life and times of Aventus Aretino, a young boy who loses his mother, and his salvation by the Dark Brotherhood. Set in the same continuity as and acts as a companion story to heiwako's "Darkness Rises When Silence Dies" and "For the Future of Skyrim," and used with permission. Skyrim is copyright Bethesda. Please review if you like the story!
1. Chapter 1: Innocence Lost

**Chapter 1: Innocence Lost**

When I was a child, an assassin saved my soul.

My name is Aventus Aretino, and I can't tell you exactly how old I was when I first met my savior. I could have been as young as eight or nine, as old as eleven or twelve. I had never celebrated my birthday, and my mother never told me how old I was. I suspect that I was at the middle of that range; I've always been big for my age, especially for an Imperial. Because of that, I sometimes suspected that my father might have been a Nord, despite my mother's assertions that he was an Imperial soldier who died in the war when I was very small. I never knew him, so I can't say one way or the other.

So let me say for the sake of the tale that I was ten years old when my mother died. Let me start my story with the end of my mother's life. It was almost a year between that sorrow and meeting my savior, but if I don't begin there, nothing else makes sense.

For the span of my childhood, however many years it might have been, my mother was my world. We were too poor to celebrate my birthdays, or hers for that matter, but she kept me safe in a city that was unfriendly to our race. While she was alive, I was never hassled or pushed around by the bigger Nord kids; I think the fact that a lot of their fathers were her customers kept them from being too hard on me. Of course, that same knowledge kept them from ever being my friends. No one wanted to be friends with a whore's son.

Yes, I knew what my mother did, what they called her. I didn't care. To me, she was the best, most wonderful person in the world. She wasn't a priestess of Dibella, just a common streetwalker without the religious protections of the church of the goddess of pleasure and beauty. We didn't talk about what she did, and she never brought her customers home, but the cruel whispers of other children and her late hours made me aware very early on of the price that was paid to keep bread on our table.

We didn't have much, but we got by. Whenever I could, I would help out around the house; keeping the place clean and reducing the amount of work my mother had to do was my way of showing how much she meant to me. I wasn't very good with words as a child, so I tried to show my love through my actions. I like to believe she knew how much I loved her, but it was always so hard for me to say the words.

I don't mean to imply our family life was perfect. There were days when mother would come home just before dawn and lay in bed weeping for hours. Sometimes she raised her voice to me, and I can recall her slapping me once—just once—but I don't begrudge her for it. Her life was very hard, I think, and raising a child as a single mother in a place like Windhelm must have made it even harder. Ultimately, though, I'll never really know what my mother's life was like beyond my place in it, and her place in mine. We never got to talk about these things before she died.

The winter before I met my savior was a hard one for us. Her business always dropped in the winter; Skyrim's winters are bad in general, and Windhelm's worse than most. Fortunately, she was canny enough to store up supplies for the winter, but the one that led into year 201 was even beyond a usual Windhelm winter. The snow and frozen rain shut the city down for days on end, and even the small bit of work she could pick up in the dreary cold months died off. It was midway through Morning Star when our food ran out, and mother had to begin braving the weather again to work whenever she could. She made enough coin to keep us in bread and cheese for a few more weeks, but by the beginning of Sun's Dawn she had started to show signs of being sick.

I know that there's no way a child as young as I was can be expected to take care of a sick adult. I know that the deep, wracking coughs that herald pneumonia mean that it's probably too late to do anything anyway.

I know those things now.

At the time, all I knew was that my mother was dying, and there was nothing I could do to save her. She tried her best to comfort me, to convince me that she would get better. I had almost started to believe it when I fell asleep at her bedside. When I woke up, her hand was on the back of my neck, cold and lifeless. She had died embracing me, comforting me even as she passed into death.

The next day or two are still cloudy for me. I remember weeping and screaming. I remember finally running outside in bare feet and huddling on the stoop of our poor home. I lay there, curled up and shivering in the cold, unable to even summon up any more tears because I was just empty inside. In retrospect, I think part of me wanted to die too. I laid there for hours in the overcast and frozen street, my skin turning blue, until I finally blacked out.

When I woke up, I was tucked into my own bed. A man was sitting next to the bed, a plate with an apple on it balanced on his lap as he read a book with one hand. I had hoped the whole thing was some sort of awful nightmare but when I looked across the loft to my mother's bed, it was stripped to the frame and she was nowhere to be seen.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," the older Nord man drawled, closing his book and setting it down on the nightstand. "You were asleep for three days, so you're going to feel pretty weak at first." In fact, I had been trying to sit up through his whole dialogue. My limbs were so weak that they wouldn't support me at all. Seeing my struggles, he leaned over and brought me up to a sitting position, my thin pillows propped behind my head to give me support. His hair was thinning and grey, and his callused hands were nearly as hard as stone.

"My… mother…" I managed to croak out through a cracked throat and chapped lips. He shook his head sadly.

"Naalia's with the Nine now," he murmured. "She was a good woman to have raised a boy so strong. Laying out in the snow like that? I've seen grown men die from less." He picked up an apple out of a nearby bowl and began to peel it with a long fighting knife. Even as sick and weak as I was, my mouth watered; we couldn't afford fresh fruit in winter, and barely in summer.

"Who… you…?" I demanded in my best voice.

"My name is… Angrenor Once-Honored. When I found you out there, I went for the city guard right away. We were worried that you had been attacked or something. It wasn't until we checked out the house that we found…" He coughed, almost decorously, and began to cut the apple into slices. "Anyway, one of the men went for Helgird—she's a priestess of Arkay—right away while I brought you in here." He leaned over and began to feed me very small pieces of apple. "When Helgird showed up, she finished with her rites and then asked me to do something for her.

"See, she couldn't be sure how your mother had died." I flinched at the word, and Angrenor had the good grace to look sheepish about it. But he didn't apologize for it; Nords rarely did. "Since I had carried you in, Helgird said that I had to stay with you until we found out if whatever your mother had is something we need to be worried about other people getting. And the best way to do that is to take care of you and make sure you get better. If you get sicker, I'm in trouble—which means you need to focus on getting better, for my sake if nothing else."

I wasn't sure why, but his words made me want to get better. If I was just living for myself, then I wasn't sure I wanted to keep living. But living for someone else? That made me want to live. Even if it didn't make any sense, it made me want to live.

For the next week, I drifted in and out of consciousness with Angrenor there whenever I woke up. Even though he wasn't supposed to leave, he had fresh food every time. On his bread and fruit and broth, I started to recover my strength. Finally, I was able to get up out of bed and move around. Angrenor smiled when he saw me walking on my own, but for some reason it seemed sad to me.

"Well, strong boy," he rumbled, "looks like you're doing just fine now." I nodded. "Just in time for the weather to start clearing up too." Now he definitely looked sad.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Nothing's wrong, not really." He sat down next to the fire and drank deeply from a dark bottle. "It's just… Aventus, now that you're well, we have to do something with you. You don't have any family in Windhelm, or anywhere as far as we can tell. You can't stay here." I sat back down heavily on the bed, my strength flowing away. "The jarl has decreed that as soon as you're well enough to travel, you're to be sent to Honorhall." My dumb expression must have prompted him to add more. "It's an orphanage—a home for children without parents. It's in Riften." He pulled a folded-up letter out of his tunic and put it down on the nightstand next to me. "Jarl Ulfric's steward, Jorleif, sent this let for you."

"But I don't want to-"

"It's not about what you want, boy!" he roared. For the first time, I was a little scared of my new friend. "It's about doing your duty and obeying your jarl!" He drank heavily from the flask again, and his words slurred somewhat. From time to time, he rubbed at his chest as though it hurt. "I used to be a great soldier until I took a sword through the chest… Now, look at me. Not fit to march with the army… We all have to do things we don't want to do." He face softened somewhat as he looked at me.

"I don't want to go," I pleaded as my eyes filled up with tears. Even as I said it, I realized that there was nothing to keep me here in Windhelm. Nothing but Angrenor, and he had made it clear that he wasn't going to keep me. I picked up the letter and held it futilely. I couldn't read, so I had no way of knowing what it said.

"Tomorrow, we'll go down to the Hall of the Dead," he said without acknowledging my words or my tears. "You can say goodbye to your mother, and then I'll let the guard know you're ready to travel to Riften. They might not be able to take you right away; the roads are still pretty bad. But they'll take care of you until it's time to go."

Angrenor stood up and walked over to where I sat. For a moment, I thought he would hug me, but in the end he only clapped one broad hand on my shoulder. As he turned and walked to the door, he paused for a moment.

"Don't be afraid, son," he said without looking at me. "At Honorhall, you'll be around a lot of other children. And I hear that the headmistress is a sweetheart. She's so beloved that her wards call her Grelod the Kind. That sounds nice, doesn't it?" With that, he swept back out into the city.

I sat there alone for a long time, thinking about what he said. He had called me "son," but so had a lot of the older men—Nords and Imperials alike—that I had known. Part of me had hoped that Angrenor really was my father, and that I could stay in Windhelm with him, but even as a child my mind was too practical for flights of fancy. My mother was dead and no one was going to help me anymore, except maybe this Grelod.

As the sun set on my last day in Windhelm for a long time to come, I packed my few meager possessions and began to look to the future. How bad could someone called "the Kind" be, really?

* * *

After the pain of losing my mother and my home—though once I had gotten one of the city guards to read it to me, I was comforted by knowing it would still be there when I was old enough to come back—the journey to Riften was actually a pleasant change. Angrenor did not come to see me off as a Stormcloak soldier loaded me onto a wagon bound for the city. I was disappointed, but I understood; he had already done more for me than most people would have, and I didn't expect more.

In First Seed, many of the roads south of Windhelm were still choked with ice and snow, but a few merchants were willing to brave the weather and potential dangers to be the first to come back with a wagonload of Black-Briar Mead. The wagon-driver, Fanar, had agreed to take me on as part of his south-bound "cargo" for a few extra coins from the city. He was surly and gruff but not unkind; he made it clear that he didn't want noise or bother on the trip, and in exchange for my quiet during the day, my evening meal would sometimes have a crusty sweetroll added to it.

After a pass through Kynesgrove, though, we were on the road alone together for the better part of two weeks. I didn't talk much, and neither did Fanar. I watched him work on the wagon, watched him brush the horses and check their shoes for rocks and set up a simple camp each night. By the fourth or fifth night, I was helping him with the chores, his grunt of approval all I needed in exchange. It wasn't so much that I wanted to be useful; it was just that I was bored. It feels terrible to say that I was bored only a pair of months after my mother's death, but I was a child—and I had done my mourning. I had mourned until it almost killed me. I had nothing left in me when I left Windhelm, and that emptiness was rapidly filled up by the sights and sounds of the road.

That trip, as unwelcome as it was, captured my young mind. I was seeing more of the world in a few days than I had ever dreamed existed. For the first ten years of my life, Windhelm had been my world. I had been outside the walls a couple of times, even down to the docks on errands or to play, but this was the furthest I had ever been from my home. Every day had a sense of wonder as long as we were moving; once we stopped for the evening, it became impossible to bear. The silence of my only companion and my own sense of uselessness were terrible things that threatened to plunge me back into the despairing place I had been in so recently.

Being useless was worse than being dead, so I made myself useful. From Fanar's grunted commands, I learned the proper way to brush down a horse and check for stones. I learned how to pitch a makeshift tent, how to find fresh water on the road, even a few simple snares to catch rabbits.

The first time I caught a rabbit on my own, I hadn't know what to do with it. It wriggled and struggled in the twine while I looked at it hopelessly. Fanar actually smiled as he reached down and took the rabbit aside to kill and skin it. Perhaps he thought I was squeamish, but I simply didn't know the proper way to do it. I followed him, and only after it became clear that I wasn't going to leave it alone did he pull out his short blade and dispatch the rabbit. I think something in how intent I was in observing the slaughter and skinning disturbed Fanar, because after that he showed me no more.

It isn't that the rabbit's death particularly interested me—it's just that it didn't disturb me either. I wasn't naïve enough to believe that meat came from nowhere. For some creatures to live, other creatures must die. Even at the age of ten I knew that basic truth, knew it deep in my bones. From then on, whenever we camped I caught, killed, skinned, and cooked my own rabbits. Still, Fanar's silent lessons stayed with me, to my benefit.

The weather grew warmer over the two weeks of our travel, not just from the season swinging around to spring but from our movement deeper into the Rift, a part of Skyrim noted for its hot springs and year-round temperate weather. By the time I arrived in Riften, I was back on my feet in more ways than one. I had fully recovered from my illness, if not from my grief, and self-sufficiency made my confidence grow. Fanar stopped his wagon off at the Black-Briar Meadery and loaded me up on one of the horses to take me into the city proper. The guards tried to ask Fanar for some sort of entry fee, but he flashed the steward's letter at them. They grumbled, but they stood out of the way.

In contrast to the bounty and warmth of the Rift, the city of Riften struck me as a cold place. The buildings were mostly run-down and wooden, unlike the solid stone walls of Windhelm, and the canal running through the middle of the city looked muddy and foul. There was a stink in the air, brackish water and rotten plants. The whole city stank of spoiled hopes and lost potential.

I did my best to avoid letting my relatively good mood become fouled by the sights and smells of Riften. Fanar had been kind to not make me walk the rest of the way, though I supposed his bonus pay for dropping me off would require a receipt of some kind. Finally, we arrived at Honorhall Orphanage, a large log-and-daub building just off the canal. Outside the front door was a young Imperial woman sweeping leaves and debris from the stoop.

Fanar stopped the horse and dismounted, helping me down from my seat almost gently. Keeping the horse between us and the woman, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a leather pouch. He scooped a dozen septims out and dropped them into my cupped hands, then folded my hands together closed over them. I looked at him with confusion.

"For helping on the road," he drawled in a gravelly voice. It was the most words I had ever heard him say at once. "Man should get paid for work. You hide that. Don't let anyone see it." He stood back up while I stuffed the coins into my pocket and patted me on the head.

We walked up to the young woman, who jumped slightly at our approach. She smiled warily at us but held the broom stiffly with both hands, as though she might have to use it to defend herself at any moment.

"You Grelod?" Fanar asked.

"Um… no?" She made it a question more than a statement.

"Got a kid for the hall," he grunted as though she had said yes.

"Oh, okay," she said, seeming to brighten up a bit. Her eyes turned to me. "And what's your name, sweety?"

"I'm Aventus Aretino," I responded immediately. My mother had always taught me to answer questions when adults asked them. This didn't seem so bad. If this girl was so nice, then Grelod must be even better, I thought.

Fanar got her to sign his paper, showing that he had delivered me successfully instead of just dumping me by the side of the road somewhere, then waved goodbye to me and took off once again. The girl introduced herself as Constance, and she opened the door to lead me into my new home. Inside, Honorhall was just as run-down and rustic as it was outside. Still, I could hear children talking, and they would be orphans like me. Perhaps I would finally have a home.

Constance led me to a large meeting room at the back of the hall, where an old woman was waiting, standing in a shaft of early spring sunlight. Constance murmured something about "the new boy" and then left in a hurry, leaving me alone with Grelod. She turned to face me, and I suddenly froze. Her gaze was like a snake, something cold and terrible, and all of my carefully hoarded confidence began to desert me.

"Aventus Aretino?" she asked in a shrill voice. All I could do was nod, my mouth open and my jaw slack. She nodded in return, as though she expected no better. In a pair of long, fast steps, she was an arm's length away from me. Faster than I would have thought possible for a woman her age, her arm came at my head and the flat of her hand struck my ear hard enough to send me sprawling onto the floor. I curled up in pain, clutching at my head.

"Lesson the first," she said when I could finally collect myself enough to look up at her. "When I ask you a question, you answer with words, not by bobbing your stupid head." She paused, looking thoughtful for a moment before she drove the tip of her foot into my stomach hard enough to make me lose my breath and see stars.

"Welcome to Honorhall, you little shit," Grelod sneered at me. "You're going to be here a long time."

…to be continued…


	2. Chapter 2: Honorhall

**Chapter 2: Honorhall**

My subsequent days at Honorhall Orphanage were no more pleasant than my first. Directly contrary to her nickname, Grelod had not a single ounce of kindness in her withered old frame. She slapped, punched, kicked, and pinched children who were even a second slow on carrying out her orders—and sometimes just because she felt like it. As the newest child in the hall, I received the brunt of her aggression. I think that she preferred victims with some spirit; it made her feel even more important when she hurt someone who could still feel angry about it.

The dozen other children I shared the building with were broken, terrified creatures, beaten into submission through physical violence, poor food, hard work, and cramped conditions. Grelod received a stipend from the jarl of Riften as well as from Jarl Ulfric, but where most of that money went I have no idea. She certainly wasn't prone to parting with a septim on our behalf if she didn't have to.

We ate watered-down beet soup and hard, days-old bread. Meat was something that my mother could afford for us only rarely, but Grelod's choice of fare was a hair better than starvation. It was worsened by the smells coming from the kitchen; every day, Grelod's overworked and harried assistant would spend most of her time cooking Grelod's meals, which were inevitably rich and hearty affairs. While we quietly spooned in our wretched soup and tried to soak the bitter bread in it to soften it up, she would sit at her own table at the front of the room, drinking honey-sweetened tea and eating roast chicken or marinated beef. She always had food left at the end of her meals—which she had Constance collect up and primly throw to the dogs outside.

The first night at Honorhall, I wanted to cry. That sensation only grew over the weeks that followed, and not just from the beatings or hunger. The sheer unfairness of it all galled me. My life had always been hard but I had never before been forced to sit in the presence of plenty while it was gleefully denied to me. My mother had never beaten me. A canker of real hate began to grow in my heart, and I think that if I hadn't found some release it would have eventually killed me. I even grew to hate my mother a little for leaving me alone, for leaving me in the hands of Grelod. Nightmares haunted my sleep and my days began to blur into a gray haze.

I think I might have lost my mind if it hadn't been for Constance. I certainly would have lost my life.

Constance Michel was Grelod's assistant, a young Imperial woman. Her brown hair hung down into her prematurely aging face where it served to only partially obscure a look that bespoke years of abuse and pain at Grelod's hands. I wondered sometimes if she was an orphan like us, only one who had never been adopted nor had the strength to get out from under Grelod's shadow some other way. She was meek and kind and much loved by the children. Her greatest flaw was that she would hear no ill words spoken of Grelod. The first time I tried to say something to her about the old hag, she would only respond that Grelod was old and set in her ways. The second time, she simply got up and walked out of the room while I stared after her, mouth hanging open in shock.

I didn't try a third time. I realized by then that it was a lost cause. And so I endured Grelod's torments and jibes and cruelties. Constance was a balm to most of the children, but especially to me. While most of the other children were Nords, boys and girls who had lost their parents in the recent Stormcloak Rebellion, I was an Imperial. To people back in Windhelm, that made me the enemy; Constance was like me, an outcast in a distant land. She didn't resemble my mother at all, but she had some of the same kindness, the same grace. It was enough to get me through the days.

One day, I was sweeping the hallways—one of a dozen interminable chores that Grelod insisted be done, but which could never be done well enough for her pleasure—when I noticed Grelod's study door was hanging open. In curiosity, I poked my head in; by then, I really should have known better, but the old hag hadn't yet beaten everything out of me. I still had my curiosity. Inside the room was a large desk and a pair of shelves littered with books. My hand crept out toward the dusty spines but before it could reach them, Constance's hand snared mine. I hadn't even heard her creeping up behind me. My gasp of fear became a cough as the dust from the books went up my nose and down my throat.

"What are you doing in here?" Constance finally asked me when my coughing fit passed.

"The door was open, and I was just-"

"Just nothing," she scolded; her voice barely above a whisper. "Even I'm not supposed to be in here." She started scooting us both toward the door. "If you want something to read, I can loan you one of my books."

"I can't read," I admitted. "I was wondering if the books had any pictures in them." Constance paused, her back to me.

"You really don't know how to read?" Her voice made me feel ashamed in a way that all of Grelod's beatings and mockery hadn't. My face flushed red and I began to shake. The tears welled up again, and I tried to force them away. I hadn't cried since the days after my mother died… and thinking about her suddenly tipped me over the edge. I started bawling away, tears and snot running down my face as I tried to brokenly hold it all in. Constance turned to me, her face wrenched up with real concern, and that just made me cry all the harder.

She dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around me, trying to stifle my sobs. Her words of comfort were nonsense to me; I was beyond understanding them. By the time I finally was able to make some semblance of order out of the sounds she was making, I realized that she wasn't just trying to comfort me. She was trying to warn me.

"What's this troll shit?" Grelod's harsh voice came from behind me. I jerked around to face her, my cheeks and chin still smeared with tears. Constance quickly stood up and stepped away from me. However kind she was, I was alone when it came to Grelod. "Tears? What's the matter, new kid? Someone steal your sweet roll?"

"Like you would ever give us sweet rolls, you old bitch," I said without thinking. Grelod's face lit up in fury, and her curled up fist took me right in the jaw. I didn't just see stars this time—the whole world turned black, and the swirls of color and points of light were like seeing the whole night sky at once. She screamed in rage as she dropped to her knees, grabbing my collar with one hand and hitting me in the face again with the other. This time, my shirt tore all the way down the front and I could taste blood. Grelod was usually pretty careful to not mark us up, just in case a guard or city official stopped by, but this time she didn't seem to care.

If Constance hadn't stepped in, I think Grelod really would have killed me. The old woman hit me at least a couple more times, but it might have been more. I had pretty well greyed out by then. I could barely make out what Constance was saying, but it seemed panicked and horrified. Finally, Grelod stood up and stepped away from me. I half sat up, turned my head, and spat out two teeth that she had knocked loose.

"You'll be cleaning that up," she said, shaking her bloody hand as though she had been dirtied by touching me. I wanted to say something witty, but all the words seemed to have been knocked out of my head. Grelod stomped away, and Constance immediately crouched down to look at me. One of my eyes was swollen shut, my jaw hurt, and I was three teeth short; I must have swallowed the last one. I was in no condition to stand, but Constance managed to pick me up gingerly and carry me to the small, sequestered room we used as an infirmary.

"You'll have to stay in here until you heal up," she said as she tucked me into the bed. She stripped off my ripped shirt and got some water and bandages to attend to my injuries. "At least the teeth came out clean. We don't have to worry about infection from broken roots." Her voice shook and she was clearly near tears herself, but her hands were steady as she wiped away my blood and tears. Finally, she looked me right in the eyes. She seemed to come to some sort of decision; her shakes stopped and her tears vanished.

"While you're recuperating, Grelod won't be able to put you to work. I'll have to take some time out every day to make sure you're healing properly, since Grelod doesn't like dealing with… sick children." My relief must have been clear on my face because she smiled wanly. "And while you're recovering, I'll teach you how to read. It's something everyone should know. And maybe one day, when you're out of this place, it will help you."

After a little while of sitting with me in silence, Constance poured me a glass of water and left the room. I sipped at it gingerly. Constance might have come to a conclusion, but so had I. By this point, I knew that Grelod was never going to let us be adopted. She liked having her own personal cadre of slaves and whipping boys too much to ever let any of us go. I could stay here until I was sixteen, like I was supposed to, and wind up as beaten and soulless as some of the children were. Worse, I could wind up like Constance: too beaten to even know how broken I had become. Or I might open my mouth again at the wrong moment when Constance wasn't around—and Grelod really would kill me.

To the Void with that.

Sitting there in that small, cramped room, on a hard and smelly mattress, I had finally decided that I needed to run away. If I was going to survive, I had to escape.

* * *

It took me almost a month to heal from Grelod's savage beating. Honestly, I probably was healed up in only a couple of weeks, but I was happy to play the malingerer and Constance seemed content to let me. I ate up her teaching like a starving man, my mind drinking in the letters and words. I made connections between concepts quickly; even Constance seemed surprised at the rate I learned the written word. I make no claims at being a particularly clever child—honestly, in some ways I'm still pretty slow, especially when it comes to understanding people. I just have a knack for picking up practical skills quickly. And at that point, reading was a particular obsession for me.

Even when Constance wasn't making time to teach me, I was studiously poring over the books she left in my room. Sometimes the print swam and my head ached from the intensity of the studying, but it was a pale and distant pain compared to my knitting bones and the three new teeth that had started poking through my bruised gums. I could overcome pain.

On my third day in the infirmary, while my left eye was still swollen shut and it hurt too much to talk for more than a couple of minutes at a time, I was surprised to see the door open with someone besides Constance behind it. For a second, I was terrified that it was Grelod come to finish me off before I could heal, but I quickly put that thought down. The new visitor was too short to be Grelod or Constance; in fact, it was one of the other kids, a Nord girl named Runa Fair-Shield.

I recognized her, of course. Our little "family" was too small for me to not know all of the other kids by name. But we weren't particularly close. I doubt we had exchanged more than a dozen words in the time I had been at Honorhall. She glanced around the room to make sure I was alone and quickly slipped inside. She was taller than me even though I guessed we were about the same age, and her brown hair was tangled and matted. Baths were few and far between at Honorhall so we all smelled, but she seemed dirtier than usual. She was cradling a small wrapped bundle under one thin arm.

"Hey," she said after closing the door behind her, her voice barely above a whisper. She sat on the stool that Constance used when she was giving me reading lessons and put the package down on the bed next to me. It was wrapped in scrounged brown butcher paper and frayed twine. "Heard about what old Grelod did to you. You got lucky."

"I feel pretty lucky," I muttered through cracked lips, wincing at the effort. "Old bitch almost killed me." Runa put a hand up over her mouth in shock. After a moment she started to shake. At first I thought she was scared that Grelod might have overheard me talking, but I finally realized that she was stifling giggles. I smiled a gap-toothed smile at her, which just made her shake even harder. I thought it was pretty funny too, but it hurt too much to laugh.

"Seriously, though," she finally said, wiping tears out of her eyes, "you're lucky. Last kid that mouthed off to Grelod never woke up. Just went into the infirmary with a crack on her head and we never saw her again." I felt my stomach sink at the revelation. If Grelod had really been responsible for a child's death, then I had made the right decision to get clear of Honorhall—and it couldn't happen too soon.

"Did you really call her a bitch to her face?" Runa asked. I nodded my assent. "Wow. Hroar said he heard you say it. He was dusting the classroom a couple doors down. I didn't know if I should believe him or not. No one stands up to old Grelod." Her shining eyes in her dirty face made me feel increasingly uncomfortable. I hadn't done anything noble or heroic; I had just opened my dumb mouth without thinking and almost gotten killed from it. I wanted to tell her that, but just the thought of talking that much made my jaw ache.

Runa started unwrapping the package. Inside the brown paper was a loaf of bread and a couple of sausages—real sausages! My mouth started to water right away even through the pain.

"Where-?" I started to ask, before Runa shushed at me. She cocked her head to listen to the hallway. When she was satisfied that she heard no footsteps, she looked back to me.

"Samuel gets to go on shopping trips with Constance to help her carry things. Sometimes, he manages to bring back… extras." I must have been gaping at the idea of stealing, because Runa scowled at me. "What? If Grelod fed us better, we wouldn't need to steal. Anyway," she continued, beginning to break up the bread and sausages into smaller pieces with her fingers, "we all agreed that since you stood up to Grelod and lived to tell about it that you should get some of the bounty."

I started to shake at the idea of real food. It felt like it had been forever. Runa passed over a little more than half of the meager loaf and meat, torn into neat, bite-sized pieces. I picked up some of the bread and made a careful attempt at chewing it; my eyes widened at discovering that it was fresh—well, at least fresh enough that it wasn't hard as a rock. I savored the food slowly, partly because my stomach wasn't used to meat anymore and partly because eating solid food pained my mouth and neck.

"Are all the other kids in on this?" I asked, wondering if I had made a mistake by not getting to know the others better before now.

"No," Runa said, her face dark and more than a little angry. "Only a few of us know. We used to have an easier time of it, since Grelod would rotate the older kids around on outside duties. Sometimes, she would even send two of us out to help Constance. Then someone ratted us out." She shook her head at the memory. Grelod hated children to show any sign of rebellion; it must have stuck in her craw something fierce to have a little conspiracy going on under her nose.

"It's a bigger risk now," she continued, "so only a few of us are in on it. Samuel pinches stuff when he can get away from Constance at the market, and the rest of us pitch in where we can. Hroar's pretty good at slipping out without Grelod noticing, and I keep watch and run interference. We figured that we'd let you in on it. You already got the stripes, so you might as well enjoy some benefit." She popped part of a sausage into her mouth and chewed merrily. At my slight smile, she laughed. "I'm taking a risk by being here, so it's only natural I get some reward too."

"I didn't say anything," I said with a smile.

I finally felt myself relaxing a bit, and I realized that I had spent the last days in utter terror. Between the lessons and the studying I had managed to keep myself distracted, but being around Runa just made some of my tension flow away. As the fear flowed away, a new sensation flowed in to replace it: guilt. How could I be planning to escape and leave behind other children for that old monster to abuse? My face flushed with shame, which Runa must have interpreted as exhaustion because she stood up and offered to let me get back to sleep. As she started to walk out, making sure to hide the remaining butcher paper and twine in her dress, I couldn't keep my mouth shut anymore.

"I'm getting out of here," I said with what I hoped was confidence. "If you want, I can try to include you guys." Runa turned back to look at me, her eyes full of pain beyond her years.

"That would be nice, Aventus," she muttered. "But no one gets out of here. It's like Cidhna Mine." I didn't get the reference and she didn't explain it, but the implication was clear enough to me. "If you try to run, the guards will just send you right back here—and then Grelod will be even madder."

"Then I'll kill her before she kills me," I said with sudden ferocity. I don't know where it came from, but Runa turned around to look at me. She seemed caught between fear and hope.

"Grelod's a monster. You need a hero to kill a monster," she said sadly, "and we're just kids." As she walked to the door, she promised to bring me more food if she could, to help build up my strength.

After Runa was gone, I thought about my sudden threat—and I realized that I meant it. If Grelod raised her hands to me again, I would fight back. Unfortunately, I also realized that Runa was right. Grelod was an old woman but I was a little kid, and I was no match for her in strength or size. The thought of sneaking into her room and killing her in her sleep tempted me briefly, but she kept her room locked tight whenever she was in it. I guess someone must have tried what I was thinking of in the past for her to be so worried about her safety while she slept.

Even with all of the potential problems, the idea of somehow killing Grelod stayed with me. Without the old bitch in charge Constance would be free to treat everyone better, or maybe the jarl of Riften would appoint someone new. Whoever it was would have to be better than Grelod; there's no way they could be worse. It would solve so many problems.

Nonetheless, I had to focus on the immediate problems: getting better and getting out. Once I was free, I could… And that's as far as the line of thought went. I had to worry about me before worrying about anyone else, even people who I wanted to help. The next month was a vacation from Grelod, but it was also training. I ate up the knowledge and the purloined food alike to make myself stronger—strong enough to save everyone.

* * *

No matter what my intentions might have been, my ambitions would probably have been for nothing if it hadn't been for the intervention of chance—or perhaps fate.

Right after I had gotten out of the infirmary, we were scheduled for a visit from a city official. A steward or a housecarl or something. It didn't matter to me so much except that it put Grelod into a fouler mood than usual since she couldn't afford to take out her aggression on the kids until after the inspection. Everything had to be spick and span or we could expect to suffer once it was over.

On the day of the inspection I was assigned to floor-sweeping duty and happened to be near Grelod's office when she came rushing out of it with Constance hot on her heels. She didn't even spare me a glance as she stalked by; unless she was actively abusing us, children were barely more than scenery to her. I glanced the way they had come and noticed something unusual. It took me a moment to process what my eyes had picked up on: Grelod had forgotten to close her office door. She normally kept it locked when she wasn't in it, but she must have forgotten this time.

I looked down the hallway and back to the office. I made my decision and quick-walked through the open doorway. I closed it most of the way, leaving a small crack to give me warning if someone came close. I kept the broom with me; if Grelod came back early, I could claim that I was just sweeping her office and didn't know any better. I would get beaten either way, but claiming that I was trying to be useful might mitigate it. Or it might not; she could just beat me to death.

The fear of getting caught made the blood pound in my ears but it felt like I could hear everything going on in the house around me. My skin prickled with sweat. Rather than waste time creeping around slowly once the door was closed, I moved in a quick half-crouch directly to Grelod's desk. I checked every drawer for loose coins or anything valuable I could sell at the market. It held nothing but papers and a few loose hairpins. There was a large chest next to the desk but it was locked. My feeble attempt to pick the lock only left me with broken hairpins and no clue what was inside.

I was almost ready to give up when I noticed that Grelod had a pair of low bookshelves. _What does a monster read?_ I wondered. Checking the shelf left me even more disappointed. All of the "books" except two were just carved wooden covers set up to make the shelf look full. One of the real books was a horrible-sounding text called _The Pig Children_, while the other one had a title that interested me more: _A Kiss, Sweet Mother_. I thought maybe it was a book of poems or fairy tales or something, so I opened it quickly. The first lines chilled me to the bone, and I can quote them from memory to this very day.

"So you wish to summon the Dark Brotherhood?" the text asked. "You wish to see someone dead? Pray, child. Pray, and let the Night Mother hear your plea."

Looking back and forth one last time to make sure I was alone, I took my biggest risk yet and slipped the book into the waist of my pants. I walked back into the hallway, my heart in my throat, and barely made it back to my bed before I heard Grelod pounding back through the hallways to her office. Once I was there, I sat heavily on the bed and dared to take out the book. I read it cover to cover and back again, desperately working to make sure my shaky grasp of the written word was telling me the truth.

I wanted to see someone dead. So I needed the Dark Brotherhood. It was as simple as that.

Well, not that simple. There were ingredients I needed, words to be said, and payment to be offered. Most of the ingredients were things I could get easily enough—candles, a knife, nightshade flowers. But the effigy for the prayer had to include a real human heart and bones. Where would I get that?

A thought jumped into my mind then, a terrible thought born of desperation and need. I quashed it down as fast as I could, even knowing it was the only way I could achieve my dreams. _One step at a time_, I told myself. The first thing I had to do was escape, and now that I knew how to eliminate Grelod from the picture, it was worth doing—immediately.

With Grelod busy and most of the other kids occupied, I quickly worked to gather up a few supplies. I stole a handful of beets from the kitchen, along with a pair of crusty loaves of bread. If I hadn't been planning on leaving that very night, I never would have been so bold. Next, I took the thin sheet from my bed and tore it in places, then tied the ends to create a crude cloth backpack. I wrapped the food in scraps from the sheet, then tucked it into the pack along with the book and my extra shirt and pants.

"You're going, aren't you?" came a voice from behind me. I spun around, ready to bolt, when I saw Runa standing there in the doorway.

"Yeah," I said, going back to my task. "Tonight." I shrugged the pack onto my back, testing its weight and sturdiness. Honestly, I didn't expect it to last long, but neither would my food. The only crucial thing was the book, as far as I was concerned.

"She'll kill you," Runa insisted.

"She'll kill me if I stay," I told her. "We both know it. I can't keep my mouth closed." I finally turned to look at her full on. She looked like she was on the verge of tears. "I'll be okay, I promise."

"What about the rest of us?" she asked. "You said you would do something. I shouldn't have expected-" Before she could get any further, I walked up to her and grabbed her shoulders. She stopped, confused.

"I'm going for help, Runa." I looked her right in the eyes and tried to sound more confident than I felt. "There are people who can help us. They're called the Dark Brotherhood. I found a book about them in Grelod's office. It says they're assassins who help people who pray hard enough." Runa gasped at the word "assassins," but I kept talking. "I promise you, I'll find the Dark Brotherhood and send them here to kill old Grelod. I promise I'll save all of you."

"I don't believe you," Runa whispered, but her eyes betrayed her. Her tears were gone and she looked at me now with something like awe. "No one ever escapes. No one ever helps."

"I'll escape," I insisted. "With your help, I'll escape. And then I'll find the Brotherhood and have them come back and save all of you from Grelod." I breathed deep, knowing this would be the hardest part. "But like I said, I'm going to need your help. Yours and Samuel's and Hroar's. I need you to show me how to get out of here, and I need someone to keep a watch for me while I get out. And if you can, I need supplies to make it back…"

"Back where?" Runa demanded, pushing out of my grasp. "If you go back to Windhelm, they'll just catch you and send you back here."

"Not before I find the Brotherhood. Even if they send me back, even if Grelod kills me, I'll find them and have them save you. I swear it."

"Don't make a promise to a Nord you can't keep," she said gravely.

"I wouldn't dream of it," I replied with a smile. She smiled back, and that's when I knew I had her. I'm not that good at understanding people, but I'm pretty good at getting them to like me. That was the first time I made a promise without knowing if I could keep it or not, but it certainly wasn't the last.

As lights-out approached, Runa got the other kid-conspirators together and explained what I was going to do to them. With Runa's endorsement, none of them seemed nearly as doubtful of me as she had been. The plan was a simple one: with Runa standing lookout Hroar would lead me to his escape route, a place where the log walls had partly separated, hidden from view by a cupboard. Samuel gave me some pointers on which market stalls were easy touches, and passed me a small collection of food and a worn kitchen knife. I thanked each of them gravely and promised again that I would send help.

The actual escape was surprisingly easy. Grelod slept deeply in a locked room and rarely checked up on us after dark. All of the doors were locked and none of the windows opened, so it was supposed to be impossible to get out without her knowing. As I pulled on my pack and got ready to push through the small opening to the outside world, Runa suddenly hugged me. "For luck," she whispered in my ear before pushing me toward the escape route.

I managed to slip through, though it was tight going and I tore my shirt on the way out. Once outside, I tossed my pack over the fence and climbed over with the assistance of a low-hanging tree branch. The cobbled stone streets of Riften pulsed with cool fog late at night from moisture drawn up from the canal. I froze for a moment, sure that I could see a guard approaching me, but a sudden cry of "Stop, thief!" from the nearby market square drew the man away from my position. I breathed a sigh of relief and quickly ran down the stairs to the canal. It was a shame that I couldn't stay to steal a few more supplies, but I was more worried about getting caught than stocking up.

The Riften canal was once a great passage for river traffic, but the silt and city sludge that had accumulated in it over the years had turned it into a sluggish, shallow cesspool. I didn't look forward to wading through it but I couldn't imagine that the gate guards would let me out traveling alone. Holding my pack over my head, I waded through the shallowest part of the canal, which still came up to my chest, to the iron grates that blocked the city from the outside. Fortunately, they were designed to keep out large river creatures and boats, not small children, so slipping between the bars was easy.

On the other side, I had to splash through more open water, terrified that someone was going to hear me and come to investigate. Finally, after what felt like forever, I managed to wade up onto shore. From the chest down, I was sodden wet and covered in blackish gunk, but I had managed what I thought would be the most difficult part of my journey. From here, I would just keep to the roads north and move off the road whenever I heard horses or wagons coming. I still had my few septims that Fanar had given me, carefully hidden away these last six months, so I could afford to spend money if I found somewhere to spend it.

In my time at Honorhall Orphanage, spring had given way to summer, so it was warm and pleasant as I walked north at night. I was filthy and scraped and damp, but in high spirits for the first time in months. Against all odds, I had survived the hell of Honorhall and now I was headed home. Everything I needed was there. My house had candles and knives, and nightshade grew wild around the city; I had seen them while out playing a few times and my mother told me to avoid them because they were poisonous.

Yes, all of those things were there, as well as the most important part of the Black Sacrament: my mother's body. As her only son, I could get access to her resting place in the Hall of the Dead. She would be my offering to the Night Mother to claim Grelod's life. She would have wanted it that way, I think—protecting me even after death.

With thoughts of sacrifice and freedom in my mind, I began the long road home.

* * *

_…to be continued…_


	3. Chapter 3: The Long Road Home

**Chapter 3: The Long Road Home**

Having escaped the clutches of Grelod the Kind and the horrors of Honorhall Orphanage, I found myself traveling north in the early parts of summer. As dawn crested the eastern mountains and cast its warmth across the Rift, I felt my spirit buoyed up. For the first time in half a year, I felt real hope and enthusiasm instead of desperation and bitterness. I knew the trip back to Windhelm would be a long one but in my newfound optimism I thought that the worst was behind me.

In some ways, I was right. Never again would I feel as helpless and lost as I did at Honorhall—but looking back now, my bubbling optimism was actually hopeless naivety. Escaping from the worst time of my life left me with a giddiness that was probably inappropriate and a confidence that was definitely unfounded. Taken as a whole, my return trip to Windhelm was a good example of what I still consider to be my worst flaw: I don't think ahead.

Don't misunderstand; I'm quite good at setting goals for myself and then achieving them. I just don't think further ahead than the next step, which can be a serious problem. My desperate struggle to get away from Grelod got me out of the city and onto the road, but I had no real understanding of how far apart Riften and Windhelm were. My journey by wagon had taken several weeks, so I thought it might take perhaps twice that long to get back. The sum total of my possessions included a change of clothes, a few days' worth of food, and a crude knife, all toted up in a makeshift pack. I had a vague notion that I would use what Fanar had taught me to snare rabbits for food, walk most of every day, and hide in the roadside bushes whenever guards came by. It would be easy!

As I said: poor planning all around.

My first problem came my very first day on the road. I had escaped Riften at night and decided that I would hike until sunset. I was soaked from wading through the canal but figured that the sun would dry me off quickly enough. By noon, my feet had started to hurt and my clothes were stiff. When I stopped to eat some of my packed food, I found that the soles of my cloth shoes had already started to wear through and that I had blisters on both feet. I moved off the road, changed into my single spare set of clothes, and pinched the blisters until they popped. The new clothes felt much better; while popping the blisters stung a bit, I had gotten used to working through pain.

By the time the sun started falling to the horizon, it felt like my feet were going to fall off, leaving me to finish my journey to Windhelm on stumps. I staggered off the road a few dozen yards to a small stream with a sheltered overhang to soak my feet. When I pulled the shredded remains of my shoes off, skin came with them and I was shocked to see that the wrappings were soaked through with blood. I dipped my ruined feet into the fresh water, still cool despite the warming days, and shook all over until dark fell. For the first time I realized that escaping Grelod might not make everything okay. In fact, I might not survive the trip back to Windhelm.

That night, I found out how cold Skyrim could be, even in the summer months, and used my dirty spare clothes for a makeshift pillow and blanket. The next day, I examined the extent of my injuries and found that my feet were in a terrible mess. I didn't know any sort of healing, so the only thing I could think to do was to stay off of them and wash them a lot. It was another three days before they were healed up enough that I could even think of leaving my little hiding hole, and by then I had exhausted my food. So far, I hadn't seen any soldiers but I could hear the noise of horses and wagons on the road from my sleeping place. Every time I heard hoof beats I was certain that it was Rift guards come to haul me back to Honorhall. Between the pain and the fear and the cold, I wasn't sleeping very well.

Still, I considered myself fortunate that I was in good enough shape to hunt when my food ran out, but I was getting impatient. I had already lost too many days to poor planning, and I was anxious to be on the move again. I hobbled as best as I could down the road until noon, then spent the next several hours off the road looking for another stream. I wound up wandering further from the road than I really felt comfortable with, but I hadn't realized how hard it was to find fresh water. Once I managed to find a small stream, I took Fanar's lessons and wove twine from vines and bark then went hunting for a rabbit.

Catching a rabbit and killing it was the easiest part of that whole week. Once a rabbit was in the snare, I ended its life and stripped it of its fur easily. I set aside the bloody fur so I could craft myself new foot wrapping later. Fanar's lessons had thankfully included a quick primer on turning hides into useful cloth and leather. As I washed the blood off of my hands in my little stream and congratulated myself on my cunning, I suddenly came to an awful realization: I didn't know how to make a fire.

Naturally, I had built the fire at home plenty of times. With flint and steel, or a striker and tinder. But when I had been traveling south before with Fanar, he had always built the fire while I was brushing the horses or doing other chores—and I'm pretty sure that he'd had flint and steel anyway. When it came to building a fire in the wilderness with no tools, I was clueless. I didn't even know where to start. I must have sat and stared angrily at my poor dead rabbit for almost an hour before practicality won out over bitterness. I can't say that I enjoyed the taste of raw rabbit, but it kept me alive.

Without a mirror handy I couldn't have said for certain, but by the end of that first week I must have looked like one of the Forsworn—covered in furs and makeshift leathers, bloody and bedraggled, and getting increasingly thinner and more desperate. Some days I went without fresh water, since I had no way to carry it if I went away from a stream. Some days I went with no food because I couldn't catch any rabbits and had no way of storing leftover meat more than a day or so before it got too foul to eat. There were moments when I seriously thought about turning myself in to the Rift guards and getting hauled back to Honorhall, when I tried my best to convince myself that Grelod beating me to death couldn't possibly be worse than this slow starvation. Only sheer bloody single-mindedness kept me going.

The worst part of it is that even if I had decided to turn myself in, it wouldn't have been to the Rift guards in all likelihood. I didn't know it at the time, but most of the guards had been moved over to the Stormcloak army that was gathering to push the Imperial forces out of the east. It was much more likely that if I had offered myself up to the first heavily armed men I saw, I would have wound up surrendering to bandits. All of my worry about getting caught and all of my indecision over turning myself in were for nothing. At the time, though, it felt real enough. Ultimately, I believed, I could only trust myself.

The days and nights blended together. Sometimes I ate and sometimes I didn't. Sometimes the road was paved with stones and sometimes it was just a dirt track. As I pushed further north, the stones became less common and the wagon-rutted dirt became more frequent. It struck me repeatedly how none of it looked familiar; between the different weather and seeing it from foot instead of from the back of a wagon, the terrain looked completely different.

Finally, I came across something that gave me hope. The road split and went up a small rise to a collection of huts, shacks, and rough buildings that Fanar had pointed out to me on the way to Riften as Shor's Stone, a mining town. They would undoubtedly have food and clothes—which they would naturally refuse to sell me once they saw me. I was on the verge of tears, sitting in a bramble by the side of the road and thinking about how close I was to everything I needed but with no way to get to it.

As nightfall came and the miners left Redbelly Mine, I made my decision. Once they had all finished drinking and doused their fires—which was late enough that I was starting to nod off in my hiding place—I crept out of the bushes and up the rampart road into the town. I quickly found the mine's storehouse, which was naturally locked, but the clothing bin behind it for the miners' washing wasn't. I remembered hearing that miners weren't expected to do their own washing or cooking, like soldiers, so I had figured on there being a washhouse somewhere in the town.

I managed to find a set of clothes that weren't too horribly stained with grime and sweat as well as a washbasin and some lye soap. I stripped naked under the moon, shivering at the cold, and quickly washed all of my clothes, including the newly purloined set. This was the most delicate part of my plan; if someone had come out at that point, I would have been hard pressed to explain exactly why I was stealing soap to wash my clothes, let alone why I was doing it naked in the middle of the night. Fortunately, I managed to get everything cleaned up without being caught and then used the leftover wash-water to scrub myself clean. I dried myself on another set of miner's clothes and put on one of my outfits after wringing out as much of the water as I could. I hung the rest of the clothes on the cooking spit over a bank of embers; the remaining heat would dry them faster.

Once they were dry enough to feel damp instead of dripping, I switched into the dry clothes and slinked out of town to a sheltered rock overhang I had seen the day before. There was no clean water nearby, but if my plan worked out, I wouldn't need it. And if my plan failed… Well, I'd be back in Honorhall, and I still wouldn't need it. I quickly grabbed some loose branches and jammed them into cracks in the rock to make a clothesline. My spare set of wet clothes went over the branch while I used my trusty knife to cut the shirt I had stolen into a makeshift blanket. I stuffed the pants with leaves and folded up the waist and legs to keep them in for a pillow. For the first night in weeks, I slept well.

The next day, I changed into the set of clothes I hadn't slept in, smoothed down my hair as best as I could, and walked into Shor's Stone. This was the most dangerous thing I had done since leaving Honorhall, but I was calm and collected. Part of me felt like I was floating above my own skull, watching the world dispassionately while the rest of me worked on instinct. It was an empowering feeling, the same feeling I had gotten when I snuck out of the orphanage. It felt like I was finally in control of my own life. It buoyed me right up until I actually walked into the general goods store, when I suddenly realized once again that I was a child out on my own—a child they would send back to Honorhall if they knew I was on my own.

I must have stood there in the doorway just a little too long because the Nord woman behind the counter coughed loudly while looking at me. I started and walked up to her. She virtually towered over me, but her face gave me an impression of amusement. I don't think they saw many children in Shor's Stone; a mining town was no place for them. I stuttered for a moment as I fumbled in my pockets for a nonexistent object.

"What's wrong, sweety?" the woman asked.

"I lost my list," I said in my most plaintive voice. I looked up at her and tried to meet her eyes, pushing tears up into mine. "I'm supposed to get supplies, but I lost my list."

"That's okay, hon," she replied. "Which of the traders are you with?"

"Fanar," I blurted out, suddenly realizing that it was going much more easily than I expected. "I'm here with Fanar."

"Fanar…" she trailed off. "Don't think I know him. Does he usually stop in here?"

"No, ma'am," I responded. Adults loved being called "sir" and "ma'am" as far as I could tell. "Normally we keep on the road all the way to Riften, but..." I shrugged amiably, trying to convey the vagaries of life on the road. Honestly, I wasn't sure why someone like Fanar would break his routine—merchants lived for routine, after all—but I didn't need to come up with reasons. I just had to sound sincere and the woman would come up with her own explanation.

She nodded sympathetically. "Well, since he's not one of our regulars I can't put it on a tab." I hoped that she didn't notice my gaping jaw as she continued. "If you can remember what you need, you can go ahead and pick it out. Will you need help getting it back to your wagon?"

"No!" I said, a little too enthusiastically before continuing more calmly. "No, ma'am. It's not a lot. Some dried food, a new tinderbox, a waterskin… and I'm getting a few things for myself too."

"Well, nothing too bad," she scolded, but with a smile. I smiled back my agreement and then set about collecting my necessities while she looked on bemused.

After I had brought back a neat little pile of goods to the counter—a backpack, a waterskin, a small pile of dried meat and hardtack, a tinderbox, the smallest pair of boots I could find, and a heavy cloak—I paused for a moment to look at some other things I thought I might need. After deciding that they were all too heavy (a cooking pot) or too expensive (potions) or too likely to have the owner ask questions (a real weapon), I finally added a spool of heavy twine and some metal fishhooks to the pile. I had gone fishing down at the docks a few times back in Windhelm; I didn't know how useful it would be on the trip home, but twine and hooks weighed almost nothing so it would be a useful fallback if I found open water.

The owner didn't even ask me any questions as she looked it all over. She gave me a price that sounded a little high but I was in no position to haggle. I quickly counted out from my precious pile of septims and pushed them across the counter before beginning to pack everything I could into the pack. As I was getting ready to leave, the owner called to me.

"Boy!" she said, and I turned slowly, thinking that she was finally going to call me out on my deception. Instead, she came around the counter with a small wrapped bundle and pressed it into my arms. I looked up at her with a confused expression. She opened one corner, showing a pile of small cheese wedges and sausages. "You're too damn skinny, even for an Imperial. You tell your master to feed you better from now on, or the next time he comes through Shor's Stone that Sylgja will have his ears." I nodded very seriously before she smiled again and patted me on the head.

I was shaking all the way back to my makeshift camp, not just from the aftereffects of a successful plan or the fear of getting caught. I was also shaking with gratitude for unexpected kindness. It helped more than I can ever say to have run into someone who was nice to me for no return; it helped remind me that there were people in the world who weren't as bad as Grelod or as beaten as Constance. I spent the rest of the day trekking down the road away from Shor's Stone with a sense of distant regret. While Sylgja had helped me, I still had no doubt that she would turn me in if she knew the truth—"for my own good," of course.

The majority of the trip after that was just monotonous rather than terrifying. I walked, I nursed my sore feet, and I hid whenever I heard or saw other travelers. I started getting calluses on my feet and recovering the weight I had lost from the orphanage and the first part of my trip. I saved my dried food for emergencies and hunted most of the time. I made small, controllable fires—a lesson I learned after almost setting my chosen sleeping space ablaze the first night I used the tinderbox. When it rained, I looked for shelter or got wet. It wasn't an adventure or particularly awful; it was just slow.

Don't get me wrong; I saw some amazing things on that trip too. I remember beautiful sunrises and sunsets, sudden rainstorms that came out of nowhere in the middle of sunny days, sudden flights of birds and rushing deer crossing the road heedless of my presence. I remember creeping past a sleeping bear just in time to hear it wake up and turn to face a pack of orc hunters that I never even saw until they burst out of the underbrush. I remember passing a giant camp close enough to see their bonfire casting mammoths into silhouettes. I even once saw a dragon flying past a bone-strewn crag, and I remember feeling both awe and terror at the distant sight. Those sights were intermittent at best, though. The days and nights blurred together, occasionally spiced up by brief moments of panic or wonder.

After leaving Shor's Stone I returned to my previous policy of avoiding human contact for fear of being caught and sent back to Honorhall. For the better part of three months, I didn't speak to another human being. The loneliness was bad, but I had been lonely before. My mother's illness and death had left me alone in our small home for quite some time, and even at Honorhall I had been a loner. Some nights I would talk out loud to myself for fear that I would forget how to speak at all.

My great comfort during this time of total isolation was fishing. As it turned out, open pools and rivers became more common as I traveled north. Fishing became my primary source of food through that summer on the road, not just because it was a little easier than hunting but because of the peace it brought me. I didn't hesitate when I had to kill a rabbit—it was a matter of survival, after all—but I felt less bad about killing a fish for some reason. Also, fish could be smoked over a low fire to keep them edible for several days; rabbit usually spoiled much more quickly. Beyond all of that was just a gentle calm that came over me while I had my line in the water, waiting for a bite.

The nights were starting to get colder again as I traveled north, and one day I noticed that the leaves were beginning to change color as well. The worry about how to keep warm and sheltered if the trip took any longer came back. I had a day or two to worry about it and come up with contingencies before the unthinkable happened: I rounded a corner, and there was Windhelm. The city was still miles away, across the rocky shores of the White River and settled into a rocky hillside. Its ice-covered stone walls were grey and imposing, but somehow welcoming nonetheless. My first sight of my home actually made me sag to my knees from relief.

That's when I heard the howling of wolves.

For most of my trip I had managed to avoid crossing any of the wildlife that populates Skyrim. I had seen plenty of birds and deer, of course, and there was one close call with a bear. But wolves were a new problem to me. As soon as my ears picked up their howling, I pulled myself back to my feet and took off down the road at a dead run. All thoughts of being found or caught were out of my head now; there was only staying ahead of the pack and surviving.

Foolishly, I took a moment to look back over my shoulder to see if I was actually being followed. Sure enough, there were three black wolves on the road behind me, snarling and snapping as they gained distance. There was no way I could outrun them on a straight stretch. Fury flooded me at the thought of getting so close to home, only to be dragged down and eaten by mangy wild dogs! Anger gave my legs new strength and I angled off the road toward a nearby tree. I hit a rock at the edge of the road at a dead run, leaping from the top of the stone to the lowest branch on the tree before dragging my legs up over the edge.

The wolves leapt after me, only to fall short and snarl in frustration. The three of them circled the tree, baying and howling. I climbed up higher into the branches just to be sure that a lucky jump didn't put me into their jaws, then secured myself in place with my fishing twine to avoid falling out from shifting. I pulled my clothes tight around me and settled in to wait for the wolves to get tired and move on. They finally left after sundown, chasing after prey that would give them less trouble. I slept fitfully in the tree, tied in place.

The next morning, after carefully scanning the countryside for more wolves, I shakily lowered myself out of my hiding place and returned to the road. I spent the whole morning trudging through drizzle and mud, wondering how I was actually going to get into the city now that I had reached it. Finally, I decided that the best choice was simply to walk through the front gates. Guards or workers might notice if I swam across the river and came up through the docks, but the front gates were left open during the day to accommodate travel and trade. No one would notice a young boy on his own; apprentices and messengers would be coming in and out of the city alone all day. That was my hope anyway.

As I walked down the majestic bridge that crossed the White River to the main gates of Windhelm, I saw that I was in luck. A group of wagons and horses were crossing the bridge as well, possibly farmers bringing in their crop for market. I calmly walked up behind the rearmost wagon and just took a place behind it, pacing back and forth as though I were checking the ground to make sure that nothing had fallen off. The guards didn't spare me a second glance as "my" wagon rolled through the gates and into the Stone Quarter.

Once I was inside the front gates I did my best to keep my jubilation inside but it was difficult. After half a year trapped in a living hell, and three months on the road, surviving by my wits, I was finally home. It had been the tail end of winter when I left Windhelm and the city didn't look that different at the beginning of autumn, but it felt like a new world to me. My house was only a few blocks away from the main gates, at the border of the Stone Quarter and the Gray Quarter. It was only a few minutes until I found myself before the front door of my small home, my eyes burning with happy tears.

It was only after the doorknob refused to budge that I remembered that I didn't have a key to the house anymore. The jarl's men had taken it when they had me taken away to Honorhall. As I looked at the door in a fog of confusion, my elation turned to despair. How could I have come all this way just to be stopped by a locked door?

As I said before: poor planning all around.

* * *

…to be continued…


	4. Chapter 4: A Kiss, Sweet Mother

**Chapter 4: A Kiss, Sweet Mother**

I spent two terrible days on the streets of Windhelm before I managed to get into my own house. It rained and sleeted for almost every hour of those two days, which I mostly spent sitting on top of a pair of barrels under an arch in an alleyway, trying desperately to stay dry and warm. When it let up a little, I would wander down to the docks with my line and hooks to catch fish, cooking them with bits of broken wood and rags that I fished out of trash bins. Those bins also provided me with a few bits of thin wire and pins that I could bend into makeshift lockpicks.

At night, I would crouch in front of my front door, working with the shabby picks in a vain effort to get the lock open. Every time I saw an approaching lantern, I would drop everything and scurry into a nearby alley to wait for it to pass. I must have broken nearly a dozen pieces of rusty metal trying to pick the lock before finally getting it to catch and turn on the second night. It was with exhausted elation that I finally walked back inside my house.

Everything was as I had left it, if dustier. My mother's bed had been stripped of its mattress and bedclothes, which I imagine they had done to avoid any possibility of her sickness spreading. Seeing the empty frame struck me with a sudden sense of melancholy, and I found myself kneeling by the bed as I had done so often while my mother had been in her last days. Tears welled up in my eyes but I refused to let them fall. I choked back the bitterness and anger, feeling them burning in my stomach and flushing my face. Without thinking about it, my lips started moving.

"Sweet mother, sweet mother," I whispered softly. As I knelt next to my mother's deathbed I wondered if I could go through with it. Could I really… do what needed to be done? Even then, I didn't want to think of it directly. It was a sacrilege… Or was it sacred? The thoughts raced around in my head as the words spilled off my lips, those same two words over and over again until they became meaningless. I became dimly aware that the room was spinning around me—and then I collapsed.

I vaguely recalled dreams of falling through an endless void, falling and falling forever. Faces sometimes loomed up out of the darkness, and voices called my name or taunted me. I remember dreaming of my hands around Grelod's neck while she laughed at me. I dreamed of my mother laying in her bed and cradling me gently—but she was a withered corpse instead of a living woman.

When I awakened I was stiff and sore and too hot. I had slept through the night and much of the next day, and I recognized that I was very sick. Months on the road had worn down my body and mind, and spending two solid days in the rain and cold had finally pushed me over the edge from simple exhaustion to actual illness. I dragged wood from the bin to the fireplace and got a fire going to warm up the frigid chambers, then pulled every blanket I could find out of the cabinets. I dragged the mattress from my bed's frame to the floor in front of the fireplace and threw the blankets over it. By the time I finished, I was shaking and weak.

Even though I felt like I was on fire already, I knew that I would soon be freezing when the fever ran its course. I ate the last of the dried food from my backpack and curled up on top of the blankets to rest. When the shivers woke me, I crawled under the blankets; when the fever came back, I crawled out from under them to let the waning fire dry the sweat from my skin. That night, I crept out long enough to bring in water from a nearby rain barrel and slaked my thirst. Then I slept through another day.

When the fever finally broke for real, I crawled out of bed and made my way to my mother's mirror, her most prized possession, and looked at myself. I barely recognized myself in it. With my shirt off, I almost looked like a corpse myself; I had no fat left on my body, and I could see my ribs through the skin. My hair was too long, but lank and limp. I was going to have to cut it if I was going to be able to go out in public during the day; adults could wear their hair as long as they wanted but young boys with long hair were rare enough to be memorable.

I didn't want to be memorable. I wanted to blend in, to be forgotten. It was the only way I would avoid getting sent back to Honorhall, the only way I could accomplish what I had set out to do.

The next day, I started the journey from sick orphan back to respectable city kid. I found my mother's shears and chopped off as much of my hair as I could; it would draw less attention to have a short, bad haircut than long, uncut hair. I changed from my orphanage rags—which were pretty well beyond salvation at that point—into my own clothes from the closet. I couldn't help but notice how tight they were getting and made a mental note to spend some of my dwindling septims on new clothes. If I bought clothes that were a couple of sizes too big, it would be a long time before I outgrew them and I could tuck in a shirt or roll up the pants to make them seem the right size. After how many times I had been surprised on my journey, I promised myself that I would be better about thinking ahead.

It was a good promise, albeit one quickly broken.

Once I was cleaned and trimmed, I left the house—during the day for the first time since I got back. I was prepared to bolt and run if anyone seemed surprised or even looked at me too long, but Windhelm was a busy city and no one even glanced my way. My only goal that first day was to make my way to the market and pick up food. I would have preferred to go fishing and conserve my funds, but I was still too weak to hold a line. I bought fresh vegetables and a few cuts of meat. None of the vendors recognized me, and one even commented on what a sweet boy I was to run errands on a gloomy day.

After my success at the market I finally started to relax. I spent a week just resting and recovering from my ordeal. When I felt up to it, I went fishing. When I didn't, I bought food—with a careful eye to how few coins were left in my emergency funds. I sometimes played with the neighborhood children, boys and girls who were younger than I had known before I left and who didn't know me. And I read the book.

The pages had become puffy with moisture and the cover was soft in places, but the book had survived the trip. I went over the ritual over and over again. It was clear what was required, and what I had to do. The end of the book, parts I hadn't really been able to read before, were becoming clearer to me now as well. The ritual would call an assassin, but I would still have to make a payment of some kind to them. That was worrisome.

Except for a few scant septims, I was broke. The only things in the house that were worth anything were my mother's mirror and an old silver dinner plate that my mother had once told me was a family heirloom. I remembered that she had fretted about selling it when things were so desperate that last winter, but since it was still in its hiding place in the bottom of the kitchen cabinet, I could only guess that she had finally decided to keep it. As I fished it out and unwrapped it, my eyes blurred with angry tears. If she had sold the stupid thing, she might not have had to work in the winter—she might still be alive. Was a plate worth my mother's life?

If not my mother's life, was it worth Grelod's?

I rewrapped the plate and put it back in its hiding place. The time had come at last to make my decision. I could hide out in my house for the next five years, fishing and scrounging to stay alive until I was legally old enough to own my home and take a real job. I could learn a trade or join the army after that, if the Stormcloak Rebellion was finally put down. Or I could carry through with my promise to Runa and the others—taint my soul, like the priests of the Divines talked about when they preached in the streets.

As I gathered my clothes and dressed for the day, I realized that I had already made my decision long ago. The moment that I found the book and kept it for myself instead of returning it, I had already decided what I was going to do. Now it was just a matter of living up to my decision.

It was time.

* * *

The rain and drizzle of my first days back in Windhelm had finally settled into the late autumn flurries and snowstorms common to the city. I made a mental note to start scavenging firewood at night once I was done with my tasks. For now, though, I had to count on one random factor to make my plan work—that the priestess of Arkay from the Hall of the Dead wouldn't remember a single little boy after almost a year.

I wandered through the streets, which were still bustling even in the cold and snow, until I came to the sunken stairs that led into the Hall of the Dead. For some reason, it was Nord tradition to keep people buried tombs, rather than burning them or burying them in the ground as my mother said Imperials preferred. Honestly, I didn't see the point of either way—dead was dead, and rituals for the body were just ways of appeasing the survivors. Still… the dead bothered me. They were a reminder of my mother, a reminder of the unfairness of life.

Putting all that aside, I pushed my way through the heavy doors into the Hall of the Dead. The priestess was in the entry chamber, speaking to a bereaved-looking older couple. The man was stern and grim-faced, while his wife was trembling and holding on to her husband's arm like she could collapse at any moment. From where I had come in, I could only hear bits and pieces of their conversation.

"…a terrible thing…" the priestess murmured, glancing over as I closed the door behind me. "…so young… all the arrangements…" She waved at me to go on in to the crypts without giving me another look. I was so surprised that I nearly froze in place before recovering and walking on. As I moved past them, I wondered what tragedy might have brought the couple here today and if anyone could ever make it right.

More than that, though, I started to think that all of my worry and fear about getting caught had been for nothing. Ever since I had been back in Windhelm, not a single adult had looked at me twice. I kept my head down and went about my business quietly—and that's what adults wanted from children. As I descended into the chilly depths beneath the city, my way lit by guttering torches, I began to realize the potential in being beneath the notice of other people. It wasn't just about staying out of Honorhall anymore; now, I was actually thinking about what could be possible if I kept my wits about me.

I was so deep in my thoughts that I almost missed the turn to go to my mother's resting place. It was a small niche cut into the stone walls of the catacombs, a tomb for a pauper. She was wrapped in a linen shroud that mercifully concealed her desiccated features. Lining the wall of the niche behind her were small jars that I knew would hold her internal organs, which had to be removed before embalming. She would lay here, her flesh turning to dry paper and stretching tight across her bones, until the niche was needed for some other penniless soul. Then the priests would remove the body, place her skeleton into a sealed urn, and move it to some forgotten corner of the Hall of the Dead.

Of course, that would never happen now. Not if I succeeded at my goal.

I hadn't expected to see any offerings—I hadn't been able to make one on my short visit the year before, and we had no other family—but I was shocked to see dried flowers laid across her breast. They were far from fresh, but the fact that someone had cared enough to leave them touched me. I wondered briefly if it might have been Angrenor, but I decided it didn't matter.

I quickly pulled my backpack from under my coat and pulled out the knife concealed in the bottom of it. I had to work quickly. The priestess being distracted by more bereaved petitioners was a useful coincidence, but the odds of anyone coming to this part of the catacombs were low at the best of times. Few people enjoyed being among the dead, and even Nords who honored their ancestors did so only occasionally.

Moving with precision, I cut away the linen covering my mother's corpse. I expected to feel something when the cloth fell away to reveal the brown, dried flesh, but the truth is that I could not make any sort of mental connection between this leathery object and my vital, beautiful mother. No, my mother was gone—what lay before me was only a husk, empty of anything that might make it real to me. That feeling of disconnection was aided by how thoroughly the last year had stripped her of flesh. Only a few scraps still clung to her skull, along with some brittle strands of hair. Most of the body was just a skeleton. Which was precisely what I needed.

Once the linens had been cut free I folded them up into a wad and stuffed them into another niche, hiding them behind another corpse's burial urns. Then I pulled the skeleton apart, folding it where I could to make it fit neatly into my backpack. Finally, I moved all of the urns from my mother's niche to other niches, not adding more than one to any given set. When I got to the last urn, the one I needed, I carefully settled it into the backpack and sealed the top down with twine. Then I closed the whole thing up and tested its weight. The urn was the heaviest thing; my mother had never been a large woman, and her skeleton weighed next to nothing.

With my new burden on my back, I retraced my steps up through the tombs and to the temple above. The priestess was still speaking with the couple, though now they were all sitting down at benches on the far side of the chamber and the woman was weeping openly. Her husband was shaking now, tears silently rolling down his cheeks. The priestess was holding the woman's hands clasped between her own and had her head down in prayer. Making a run across the chamber was briefly tempting, but I put the idea out of my head and forced myself to walk across slowly; only criminals ran.

My slow but confident stride cleared the room in only seconds, but it felt like forever. At any point, any of the three adults could have looked up and asked where I was going with a backpack full to bursting. They might think I was a thief, come to rob the tombs of their offerings, but if they pulled the backpack open what they found would be much worse. Fortunately, all of them were too engrossed with whatever sorrow was playing out to notice me.

As I emerged into the streets and breathed a sigh of relief, I couldn't help but wonder about the people I had seen. They were much older than me, but they seemed just as broken up by whatever had brought them to the Hall of the Dead. Did losing someone ever get any easier, or was every loss just as painful as mine? The thought that chilled me to the bone was wondering if everyone who died had someone mourn for them like that. Would someone weep for Grelod when her heart stopped? Was it right to inflict my pain on another?

In my heart of hearts, I already knew the answer. No one would mourn for Grelod, like no one would mourn for a rabid wolf that had to be put down to protect a shepherd's flock. Killing her would save other lives, and would redeem the suffering felt by others. I felt in my bones a basic truth—that killing one person could solve so many problems. I wondered at the possibilities.

When I got back to the house, I immediately went to the room where my mother's bed had been. Once I had been strong enough to move the frame, I had dragged it into the main room and broken it apart for firewood. That left a large open area for me to do my work in. Bit by bit, I pulled the skeleton out of my backpack, laying it down in an approximation of the original shape. I used my knife to scrape off as much of the remaining flesh as I could and put it next to the dry ribs. I laid out the flowers and arranged the candles in a circle around the effigy.

Lastly, I pulled out the burial urn and steeled my nerve; this would be the hardest part. I untied the twine holding the lid down and tried to pull off the top to no avail. It turned out that it had been sealed in wax, which I had to chisel away with my knife. Once it was open, a foul smell wafted out. I could only guess that it was the smell of the embalming fluid that they had steeped my mother's heart in after they had cut it out of her chest. I felt bile surge up into my throat as I dipped my hands into the murky fluid, and I fought to keep myself from vomiting. My hands finally clasped around what they sought.

Without looking too closely at the grisly organ, I placed it carefully inside the rib cage of the effigy. Then I lit the candles one by one. In their flickering ghost-light I said the words.

"_Sweet mother, sweet mother,_

_Send your child unto me,_

_For the sins of the unworthy_

_Must be baptized in blood and fear."_

And I waited.

* * *

And I waited.

* * *

And still I waited.

When no assassin came after the first day, I was slightly disappointed. Still, I told myself that it would take them some time to send someone to me. The book hadn't said how long it would take, and I supposed that they must be pretty busy. I contented myself with the idea that the assassin would come within the week. At most.

After a week had passed with no sign of the assassin, I told myself that it would be no more than a month. Moreover, since the Black Sacrament was crucial to the whole thing, I had to keep saying it as often as possible. That way, the Dark Brotherhood would know that I was serious—that my prayer was heartfelt and real. I left the effigy where it lay and ignored the smell. I procured more candles and made sure that the area was lit day and night. When the Dark Brotherhood finally came, I wanted them to see how serious I was about my petition.

The fact that no assassin had come didn't make me any less sure that it would happen. Indeed, the lack of physical proof only made my faith grow even stronger. An organization as powerful as the Dark Brotherhood must have dozens of contracts to fulfill at any one time. They would get to me in due course. Grelod would die. The other children would be free. I just had to keep the faith.

The Black Sacrament began to fill my every waking thought. I would whisper it to myself out loud even when I was doing other things. I would say it over my meal like a blessing-prayer. I would say it out loud before I left the house, and right after I came home. Eventually, I came to resent the time I spent away from the house catching fish or otherwise finding food. Every minute I was out of the house was a minute that the Brotherhood could have arrived. Would the assassin wait for me if I wasn't there? Could he even find me if I stopped saying the prayer? Such questions haunted me.

The Black Sacrament consumed my thoughts, but most of my days were empty of anything to do. As I had settled into life in Windhelm and relaxed my guard, I found that I could interact with other children without drawing too much attention from their guardians. I had even played with the local kids a couple of times while I was recovering from my trip. The loneliness of the road had changed me in some basic way, something fundamental in the way I looked at other people. While I wanted to be around people from time to time, I functioned fine on my own for the most part.

Now, even as I was afraid to go out of sight of my house, I found myself strangely hungry for company. Most of them were younger than me; the older kids knew me, and I hadn't had any real friends among them, so I thought it was safer to spend my time with the younger ones. We played tag and hide-and-seek and hoops, all games I could play in the streets without leaving sight of my house.

One clear winter day, only Grimvar Cruel-Sea had come out to play because of the cold. I liked Grimvar well enough, and he always had marbles to play with, lovely round glass spheres that caught the light. More than that, he was always outdoors, rain or shine, so whenever I needed to be around someone, he was there. We were in the courtyard near my house that day, shooting marbles on a patch of ice, when a shadow fell across us.

"What's that you were saying, boy?" came the gravelly voice of a Dunmer woman. I looked up into her red eyes and realized that I must have been muttering the prayer to myself as I lined up a shot. I tried to shake my head and murmured that I hadn't said anything when Grimvar piped up.

"He says that a lot, Idessa," Grimvar said, trying to be helpful. "Aventus lost his mom last year, and he prays for her a lot. 'Sweet mother, sweet mother,' all the time." Idessa's face hardened the slightest degree, but it was enough for Grimvar to realize that something was wrong. Idessa stiffly held out her hand to him and he took it, quickly scooping up his marbles as he stood up.

"Sorry, Aventus," he said around a sheepish smile as the woman pulled him up. "I'll see you later."

"You'll do no such thing!" the Dunmer hissed, shooting me a nasty look over her shoulder as she dragged Grimvar away. "I want you to stay away from that boy from now on!"

"Awww, Idessa…" Grimvar whined. The sound trailed off as the two of them walked away, leaving me sitting alone on the cold ground. It was the last time I played with him. From then on, whenever I ventured outside to see if other kids were around, Idessa was always near Grimvar's side—and that put her near the other kids. It was a rare day after that I could even go outside without happening to run into her and her baleful red glare.

Honestly, I didn't blame her. I knew that some Nords hated the Dunmer, and had even pushed them into the worst part of the city to live away from "decent" folk. As an Imperial, I had felt the same sting from hard words and slurs, so I knew what it was like to be despised just because of your race. More than that, I couldn't be angry at Idessa for having seen me for what I really was. I played with the other children out of occasional loneliness, but I wasn't really one of them. Even then I could feel my difference. She saw under the mask and responded to what she had seen there. I was curious how she knew about the Black Sacrament more than mad about losing access to my playmates.

And still I waited.

* * *

By midwinter, I was becoming desperate in more ways than one. My throat was raw from saying the Black Sacrament over and over. When the snow was at its worst, I had trouble getting out of the house; some days, the ice was too thick at the docks to even go fishing. I was out of septims and out of options. I was surviving on food scavenged from trash bin at night and my fire was stoked from furniture I had been breaking up piece by piece.

"Sweet mother, sweet mother," I sobbed on a cold winter's night like many that had come before. "Why isn't it working?" I finally cried in frustration. I stared at my mother's skeleton, her bare jawbone seeming to laugh at me and her withered heart staining the wood under it. As the tears built and my own heart came close to bursting, that's when I heard my savior speak for the first time.

"What's going on here?" she asked from behind me.

I spun around and stared up into her face. She was dark-haired and beautiful, not what I had expected from an assassin at all. When I thought about the Dark Brotherhood as people, I thought they would be hard-looking, dangerous men festooned with knives and scars. This woman was… delicate, almost. Her eyes were piercing and blue, and she was wearing a brown dress with fancy embroidery on the hem. If I hadn't known why she had come, I would have mistaken her for just another high-society lady out for a night on the town. Clearly, the Brotherhood knew how to conceal themselves well. I could feel the tears of relief streaming hot down my dirty cheeks.

"Oh, you came!" I exclaimed, my voice quavering. Was it just relief I felt? Or was it the hunger and exhaustion catching up with me. "I knew if I did it enough that you would come." I tried to stand up to go to her, but stumbled and found her suddenly next to me, holding me up in arms that were surprisingly strong. The knife dropped out of my hand and narrowly missed impaling my foot. She guided me to the kitchen table and pulled a wrapped half-loaf out of her large satchel. I found myself tearing into it almost immediately when she pressed it into my hands.

"Why don't you tell me what's going on?" she asked kindly.

"My mother died," I blurted out. The tears were drying up now, but another one leaked out against my will as I said the words I had waited so long to say. "I don't know what happened to my pa. He went to the war and didn't come back. They sent me to the orphanage in Riften. The other kids were nice, but Grelod the Kind…" I shuddered at the memory of that old hag. She passed me a wedge of cheese that I tore into as well before continuing around a mouthful of food.

"Grelod isn't kind. Not at all. She beat us and told us no one loves us and how we'll always be alone. So I ran away and came home. I found a book that told how to do the Black Sacrament, how to call the Dark Brotherhood." The words were just tumbling out of me; I had wanted to be calm and adult in front of the assassin, but I couldn't seem to find my balance. "Please," I begged, "you have to kill Grelod the Kind."

"Sweety," she said with a narrow smile, "I'm not an assassin." Was this part of the process? Did she have to deny who she really was to test me?

"But you came! I did the sacrament and you came!" I insisted. "Please, Grelod is a terrible person. She's a monster!" The woman was just shaking her head slowly. What was I doing wrong? I couldn't lose this chance, not after I had given up so much… I finally realized what I had missed and continued, "I can pay you. I have a reward. I wouldn't expect you to do it for free." At that, she finally agreed. I knew that payment would be crucial!

"I'll see what I can do," she said humbly. "But in return I want you to take better care of yourself. Get more to eat." She wasn't just a magical assassin from the Dark Brotherhood—she was kind too! I blinked and looked away from her.

"I don't have much coin," I lied. In truth, I didn't have any.

"Why don't we look around the house and see what we can find?" she suggested. I didn't know what good it would do; I had ransacked the entire house looking for something to pay her with months ago. Still, it would be good form to go along with her. Anything she found she would probably keep, but for Grelod's death anything was a small price. She looked through the kitchen cabinets and asked me to check the front room.

As I listlessly rifled through the cabinets and drawers, one of them got stuck and wouldn't move. I was sure that I had checked all of these before… hadn't I? After a few moments of pushing and pulling, I finally got the drawer to pull the rest of the way out, revealing a fat leather pouch that clinked when it came free. I stared at it for a minute in shock, unable to believe what I was seeing. Finally, I pulled it open—and a shocked cry escaped my lips. There had to be a hundred septims in it! Where had this much money come from? How had I missed it?

In the end, I could only come to one conclusion: my mother had managed to save up some money that she had never told me about, money that she wouldn't touch to save her own life. Even at the end, she must not have believed that her sickness was that bad. She believed that she was going to get better. She hadn't abandoned me at all. This money was proof of that. No one saved this kind of money if it could be used to save their lives instead. She meant what she had said about getting better and making our lives better. She had just died before she could do those things…

It took me a long time to compose myself enough to tuck the pouch into my pocket and go back to face the assassin again. All of the bitterness and pain I felt was gone at last. Things were going to be okay again, I could feel it. The woman stayed a little while longer before promising that she would come back to check on me soon. My heart surged with joy at the idea that it wouldn't take long before Grelod met her just end.

As she stepped out into the cold winter night, I waved goodbye to my savior. She had never told me her name, and I hadn't asked. As an assassin, I assumed she would have given me a false name anyway. Even if I only ever saw her once more I would be grateful. The knowledge that my mother truly loved me had given me comfort, and the certainty that Grelod's fate was near at hand filled me with new hope. For the first time in over a year, I slept a truly peaceful sleep.

An assassin saved my soul when I was a child. If that had been the end of it, I still would have counted it as the most important moment of my life. Little did I know at the time that it was only the beginning.

* * *

_…to be continued…_


	5. Chapter 5: Three Seasons in Windhelm

**Chapter 5: Three Seasons in Windhelm**

After the assassin left me, I spent the next several days cleaning. I realized that I had let my mask slip, let my appearance become sloppy and unkempt again. More than that, I realized how filthy my house had become. In my obsession with drawing the attention of the Dark Brotherhood, I had stopped cleaning up after myself. Dirty dishes piled up in basins, the floors were tracked with dirt, and crawling things skittered in the corners. Divines save me, I wouldn't have been surprised to find a skeever under my bed.

The first thing that had to go was my mother's remains. They had served their purpose with the Black Sacrament and held no more power over me. My mother was gone; her body was just a shell, and without the necessity of the sacrament, it was a shell with no further purpose. I gathered the bones, rotten flesh, and wilted flowers together, bundled them up with heavy stones, and sank the whole lot into the bay at night.

As the bundle sank beneath the water on that moonless night, I felt a brief moment of melancholy. It wasn't the sharp sting of loss or the horrible despair of loneliness that I had gotten so used to over the last year. The feeling was mellower and sweeter than that. While I still missed my mother, the pain of losing her had started to fade with the realities of daily living long before. Standing there, watching the last bubbles break the surface, all I could feel was her love for me reaching out to me from beyond the grave, and the distant ache of losing something long ago. It may sound callous, but the truth is that it had been a year already—and a year is a long time to a child.

Honestly, since I could do little more than count the days until my assassin returned with the good news of Grelod's death and keep busy with the minutia of life in Windhelm, every day seemed long in its own way. Other children had begun to avoid me ever since the incident with Grimvar so I was alone even more than before. It was peaceful in its own way, though it made the time pass slowly.

Cleaning the house gave me a chance to really think about the future for the first time. While I spent some of the time fantasizing about the various ways that the Dark Brotherhood might kill Grelod, I was mostly content to know that it was taken care of. On the other hand, the reality of living under the nose of the very people who had sent me away to Honorhall in the first place was worrisome. According to the letter the jarl's steward had written, I was supposed to stay at Honorhall for six years, and it had been one already. Still, how could they know how old I really was? Worse come to worst, I could wait out the next five years somehow, but I was already beginning to contemplate only waiting one or two more before going up to the Palace of Kings and telling a bald-faced lie.

More and more, I was beginning to realize how haphazard Jarl Ulfric's rule over his capital really was, which gave me the confidence to believe I could get away with something like that. There were hardly any guards in the streets since everyone had been sent to Stormcloak training camps or to garrison captured forts. When I was down on the docks fishing, it was a common sight for me to see captains and merchants arguing with dockmasters about fees and tariffs since no paperwork had been filed. Everywhere were signs of Ulfric spreading himself too thin with his campaign against the Empire.

As the house cleaning progressed and I began to return to something like cleanliness, I started to wonder what Windhelm would be like by the time I was ready to confront the jarl for my property. Would he be High King Ulfric Stormcloak by then? And if so, what would become of me? As an Imperial, I had already suffered at the hands and taunts of bullies more than once; if the Empire were defeated, would I have any place in Skyrim anymore? It was strange to think of something as abstract as my race determining my future. I had been born in Skyrim, after all; as far as I knew, so had my mother. We were Imperials only by heritage and not by politics, but Ulfric's pro-Nord policies had made us foreigners in our own homeland.

Still, it could have been worse. Living so close to the Gray Quarter, I had a window-box view of how the city's Dunmer were treated. Most of them were refugees from their homeland. I remembered hearing that a mountain had exploded there, and that they were running from that. I couldn't imagine something as big and solid as a mountain exploding, so I didn't really understand it at the time; all I really knew was that something bad had happened to their home and that Skyrim was the closest, safest place for them to settle. Because I had grown up so close to their neighborhoods the Dunmer didn't bother me at all. I had even known a few dark elf children before my mother died, though obviously I had lost touch with them when I was sent to Honorhall.

Not a week went by, though, that I didn't catch sight of a dark elf being harassed on his way in or out of the district. Usually, it was just jeers and shouting, but I saw some poor bastard take a piece of masonry in the forehead when a gang of kids started throwing rocks at him. He went scrambling down into the district as fast as he could manage with blood in his eyes, their shouts and stones following behind him. There weren't enough guards to catch people doing things like that, not that guards would have been likely to stop it even if they had been there. Ulfric had made it clear how he felt about elves on more than one occasion with his public speeches, so the people on Windhelm had realized they could get away with just about anything as far as the mer were concerned. That attitude was really driven home for me by something I saw a few weeks after the assassin left.

One day while I was out at market refilling supplies I couldn't get by fishing, I happened to see Angrenor Once-Honored. He and another local Nord by the name of Rolff were just standing around together near the Gray Quarter just off the main gates of the city. I thought maybe Angrenor had somehow figured out that I was back in Windhelm and had come to take me back to Honorhall. I quickly ducked behind a stone column and put my basket of groceries on the ground at my feet. If he came toward me, I was willing to sacrifice the few septims' worth of food to keep my freedom.

As I peered around the column toward him, I saw that he wasn't looking for me at all. He was too far from my house to be waiting for me, and he was reeling a bit on his feet. With some distaste, I realized that he had to be drunk. Rolff Stone-Fist was a notorious drunkard and brawler, which he could get away with because his brother Galmar was an old war buddy of the jarl—as well as his current field general in the Stormcloak Rebellion. Rolff was no soldier, but he expected to be treated like one because of his illustrious older brother. I knew that Angrenor had been a Stormcloak for a while, but seeing the two of them together leaning on each other and laughing like morons made my heart sink a little. For some reason, I had thought that Angrenor was better than that.

While I stood there, a Dunmer woman came through the gates into the Stone Quarter carrying a basket. She saw the two Nords and immediately tried to make a right turn for the Gray Quarter, but the two of them were in her way in a flash. They smiled like wolves and her face became painful and drawn.

"What have we got here?" asked Rolff with a drunken slur. He reached out and flipped up the wicker lid of the basket to look inside. "Smuggling Imperial secrets into the city, are we?"

"I'm no more an Imperial than you are," the Dunmer woman pleaded. "It's just spices from the Khajit caravan."

"Spices? Skooma more likely!" shouted Rolff with drunken glee.

"If you're no Imperial," demanded Angrenor, "then why haven't you damned dark elves sworn for Jarl Ulfric? Think you're too good for us Nords, do you?"

"No," she said, seeming genuinely distressed now, "it's not that. We haven't taken a side because it's just not our fight!"

"You gray-skins come here where you're not wanted, eat our food, pollute our city with your stink!" Rolff almost screamed into her face, finally slapping the basket out of her hands. "And you refuse to help the Stormcloaks!"

The woman gasped sharply and took an involuntary step away from them. I looked desperately around the plaza for someone who might help. There was at least one guard who had clear line of sight to the whole thing, but he was already turning to walk away. I didn't dare break hiding; if Angrenor saw me, it would be all over for me.

"Please…" she begged, tears welling up in her red eyes.

"Maybe the reason they haven't picked a side is because they're Imperial spies," ventured Angrenor with a sneer. I had always thought his face had a stern handsomeness to it but he looked like a leering troll now, twisted and horrible from hate. Angrenor nudged her spilled basket with a toe, cocking his head to one side as though he were looking for hidden Imperial missives.

"You can't be serious!" she snapped, finally seeming to get some strength in her voice.

"Maybe we'll pay you a visit tonight, little spy," Rolff snickered. He walked toward her, backing her up against the stone walls of the city. With one meaty hand, he reached up and grabbed her by the chin. Even though they were more than fifty feet from me, I could hear every word as though they were standing next to me. "We have ways of finding out what you really are…"

The dark elf woman could keep his gaze no longer and flinched away. He let go of her chin and walked off laughing to himself. As he passed her dropped basket he gave it one last vindictive kick, scattering the contents around the plaza. Angrenor's face twisted down into a frown; perhaps he thought they had gone too far. Still, when Rolff got too far ahead, he jogged quickly to keep up and started laughing right along with him.

I watched the woman stoop down onto the cold cobblestones of the Stone Quarter and try to gather up as much of her spilled spices as she could. She was shaking with rage and fear as she scooped up burst packages and scattered leaves.

And no one helped her.

As I slunk out of the plaza back toward my home, I found myself shaking too. I was angry at what Angrenor and Rolff had done, but I was also ashamed that I hadn't done anything to help. The Nords of the city might have a free hand to treat the rest of us badly, but they could get away with it because no one would stand up to them. While I wallowed in guilt at home, I suddenly wondered: What would the Dark Brotherhood do in a situation like this?

I thought about that question a lot that winter. Part of me longed to be like them, so brave and powerful. The assassin had helped me so much that I could only imagine how much they helped other people too. It had to be a great feeling, ending the lives of the wicked and helping the innocent get the justice they deserved. Most nights, I dreamed about being an assassin, jumping from rooftop to rooftop in the moonlight and serving vengeance at the end of a gleaming blade. The night after I saw what Rolff and Angrenor had done, all I dreamed of was darkness—an empty void, and me falling through it forever.

The next several days saw me wrestling with myself over my inaction. The Brotherhood wouldn't have stood for bullies like Rolff and Angrenor treating an innocent woman like that, I was sure of it. They would have done… something! Something more than just stand there scared witless. Maybe not right away, maybe not openly—but something.

While the winter storms raged outside my door, I stayed warm inside my home and thought deep, dark thoughts. With Grelod surely dead by now, I had to stop thinking about death—hers and my mother's—and start thinking about living. In the worst case scenario, I had five years before I could legally claim my home. If I spent every day hiding from trouble and feeling like I did afterwards, I really wasn't sure I could live with myself that long. It had been hard enough to keep my head down while I was waiting for the Dark Brotherhood to contact me; there was no way I could turn it into a lifestyle.

Still, thinking about it reasonably made me realize that there was probably nothing I could have done. By the time I had realized what was happening, Rolff and Angrenor had already worked themselves up into a righteous froth. If I had tried to intervene, it would have just resulted in my going back to Honorhall and wouldn't have spared the woman from any of her humiliation. No, I couldn't have done anything—probably. It was the "probably" that was killing me. If there was a chance I could have helped, shouldn't I have stepped in?

Thinking about the Dark Brotherhood once again comforted me. They hadn't saved me from my treatment at Honorhall, but they had stepped in at my request to keep Grelod from hurting anyone else. That guided me on the way I thought about what I had seen. I couldn't have stopped those two men from harassing the woman, but I could be on the watch for things like that in the future. As I got older, I could learn ways to help people who needed help. I wouldn't be the sort of person who just stood around and watched others suffer helplessly.

I wasn't sure yet what I was going to do with my life but I knew two things for sure: I wasn't about to let other people dictate how I could live my life, and I wanted to be the sort of person who helped others. In short, I wanted to be an assassin. I just had no idea how to go about that, but I figured it had to be like the Black Sacrament—keep praying and be patient.

So I kept the faith. And I waited.

* * *

It was about halfway through the month of Morning Star when I ran into my assassin again—almost literally.

I had made an early-morning run to the market because the winter storms had left the bay hopelessly frozen over and the snow had kept me locked up in my house for almost two days straight. Because of that, I hadn't been able to fish in a week or more, and my cupboards were nearly bare. After filling up a backpack with near-frozen vegetables and cuts of meat from Hillevi Cruel-Sea's stall at the market, I picked up a fresh loaf of bread and a wheel of cheese at Candlehearth Hall.

I had meant to wait until I got home to eat but the rumblings in my stomach were just too much to ignore, and I would up juggling the bread and cheese as I snacked off both of them on the way out. As the door opened, I wound up running right into someone and nearly dropped my food. I quickly backed away and looked up to apologize, only to look into the blue eyes of my savior.

"You came back! I knew you would!" I squealed before I could stop myself. I slapped the loaf of bread over myself to stifle my laugh of joy, and the assassin dropped a hand onto my shoulder. She looked at me with concern and I quickly made my face still and sober as she led me away from the inn. "Don't worry, I haven't told anyone."

"I'm glad to see you look better," she said pleasantly. "I was… worried."

"Please come to my house," I blurted out. She looked at me sharply and I continued, "I have your payment." She looked torn for a moment but finally nodded. In both of our brief meetings I had noticed that she didn't speak much, and when she did it was barely above a whisper. I wondered if that was just something you learned to do when you were an assassin—if being quiet and unobserved was just such a part of you that you did it all the time.

Once we were back at the house, I left her in the entryway while I fished out the family heirloom. While I had some septims now, the plate would be harder to convert to coin for me than for her. If it meant that I wound up overpaying her, so be it.

"Here, take this," I said as I pushed the plate into her hands. "It's been in my family for a long time. You could probably get a lot for it." She took the silver plate and looked at it critically, finally tucking it to her side before dropping to one knee in front of me.

"I'll keep it to remember you by," she said softly before leaning in to wrap one arm around my shoulders. I went stiff and froze for a moment. In the last year, being touched had become a rarity—even rarer when it was someone touching me without meaning me harm. I really wasn't sure what to do, so I awkwardly returned the hug. Were all assassins so kind?

"But you have to promise me something," she said as she broke the embrace. She looked me soberly in the eyes and breathed deeply. "You have to return to Honorhall." Something in my face must have given away the raw terror I felt at that proposition, so she squeezed my shoulder tightly to get my attention. "Don't worry. Grelod is gone. Constance is a lovely woman, and she'll take care of you—and your friends. She can find you a new family, Aventus."

I thought about what my assassin said. On the one hand, I did miss my friends at Honorhall. I hadn't connected with any of the kids in Windhelm except for Grimvar, and Idesa would never let me see him again if it was up to her. While the idea of having a mother again appealed to part of me, I couldn't imagine what having a father was like. And truthfully, I had started to enjoy taking care of myself. The nagging worry of spending the next five years dodging the authorities had started to seem like a game instead of a burden.

She was right about one thing at least—Constance was a good person. I could rest easy knowing that Grelod was dead and that Constance would be taking care of the others now. Honorhall had held very little for me but terror, even with Runa and Constance being there. My assassin continued to look at me expectantly, waiting for my answer.

"I'll… think about it," I ventured, expecting her to scowl at me and chastise my decision. I was genuinely shocked when she merely nodded and smiled. Adults always seemed to want to force kids into doing what they wanted us to do, so having one accept my indecision without complaint was a novel experience, to say the least. She stood and put the silver plate in her satchel before saying that she had business to attend to and that she would try to check on me again if she came back through Windhelm.

I wanted to ask her to hug me again but I didn't have the words, so I just smiled and thanked her again before she left.

* * *

As the spring thaw came and the ice floes in the bay broke up, I spent a lot of my time down on the docks, fishing and chatting amiably with the Argonian workers who came through. The lizard-men had scared me when I was younger, but spending every day in close contact with them as I fished for my dinner and they labored for theirs reassured me that they weren't really all that different. I would even chat with them occasionally and giggle whenever they called me "land-strider." If they only knew!

While I had no steady income, I found that I could earn a few stray septims by carrying messages for the merchants and captains who needed someone willing to run up and down the stone steps connecting the docks to the city proper. It wasn't much money, but I didn't have many expenses. Most of my day was spent fishing for the day's food and waiting for someone to yell for me. It wasn't by name, of course. "Messenger!" the cry would come from somewhere, and I would quickly tie off my line before scanning around to see who it was.

By that spring, the local captains had gotten to know me pretty well and my fear of being discovered had almost completely vanished. Knowing that the worst that could happen was being sent back to Honorhall seemed a lot less terrible now that Grelod was gone. I would prefer to stay independent if possible, but to make a living I was going to have to take some risks. Adults had all the money, after all.

On one particular day in early Rain's Hand, the call went out and I ran to answer it. The man that I saw was an older Nord, balding but with a full brown beard. I was shocked to see that I recognized him as the man from the Hall of the Dead. I must have gawped a few seconds too long because he scowled at me. I quickly recovered myself and asked what he needed.

"Actually," he said, "I was hoping that I could speak to your parents." My blood ran cold. Had I been found out?

"Have I done something wrong, sir?" I asked, dithering around the request to the best of my ability.

"No, boy! No!" he laughed. "Quite the opposite!" He sat down on a nearby crate and I allowed myself to relax an inch. I kept one eye on the stairs to the city and continued standing just in case it was a trick.

"My name is Torbjorn Shatter-Shield," he explained, "and I own a shipping company here in Windhelm. Now, I've been down to the docks at least twice a week since the bay opened up enough to let in ships, and every time I've been here, you've been here. Come rain or shine, I see you sitting on the dock with your line or running back and forth with messages.

"Well, I got curious about you and I asked some of the scalies about you." He nodded toward the Argonians who were busy unloading the nearby ship. "They said that you spent every day down at the docks looking for work. That even on days it was too bad for them to be out and about, they could see you from the windows of the assemblage, just holding on to your line and waiting for someone to call out. Is that true? Are you out here every day?"

"Not every day, sir," I said as politely as I could manage. Some days, it's just too cold or wet." _And the rain scares off the fish_, I didn't say. He nodded and smiled, slapping his knee like it was something funny.

"Boy, you work harder than half the grown men I have on my payroll," he said amiably. "I was hoping that I could ask your parents to let you serve as a ship's boy on one of my trading vessels. It wouldn't be much pay, but it would be more than a messenger boy makes. And…" he continued on, but I wasn't listening anymore. My mind raced as he talked on about the many benefits of setting to sea at a young age.

All I could think of, all that kept running through my head, was that someone wanted me. This man didn't know me except through his employees, but he wanted me. It was staggering to think about. I didn't know what to think. Finally, he stopped speaking and I was able to recognize that he was waiting for some kind of response.

"It sounds…" I suddenly realized that I didn't know anything he had said in the last several minutes. "…really good," I finished lamely.

"Of course it does," he said sagely. "All I need to do is ask your parents, and… How old are you, boy?" he scowled suddenly.

"Twelve," I lied, and quickly added, "sir."

"Hmmm," he rumbled. "That's a problem. I thought you were older than that." My heart sank slightly. "Still, that's just a bigger point in your favor, to be working so hard at such a young age." He nodded to himself before standing and patting me on the shoulder. "No hurry, right? Just let your parents know that I'm wanting you for my crew as soon as you turn thirteen. I figure that your birthday must be coming up soon," he drawled. And then he winked at me.

I was shocked! Was he implying that he wanted me to work for him badly enough that he didn't care I was a year too young? I assured him that I'd let them know. He tossed me a small coin purse as he left, and I was amazed to find it held a dozen septims. He had given me money just to listen to him talk about the ocean! Of course, it was moot since I didn't have parents, but it had been very nice of him to make the offer at all.

Almost two months later, as I was dozing half-asleep in my bed and listening to the rain fall outside, I sat bolt upright in sudden revelation. I could forge my mother's signature! Torbjorn never even had to meet her! As I exulted in my clever plan, I just as quickly turned to worry. Would his offer still be open two months later? And what was wrong with me that it had taken me two months to realize I could just lie?

The next morning, I went straight to Clan Shatter-Shield's offices next to the Argonian assemblage at the Windhelm docks. I had a forged letter of acceptance tucked into my pocket. I wasn't really sure that I wanted to be a sailor for the rest of my life, but the old man had done me the kindness of offering me a real job. I wanted to repay that kindness if possible.

More than that, going to sea for Clan Shatter-Shield could give me a purpose greater than just counting down the days until I was old enough to take back my home legally. It struck me as funny that I had come all this way to get back to my house, just to leave again so I could afford to keep it. Still, who knew? I might learn something valuable as a member of a ship's crew. And I would get to see the world. I might even be able to visit Cyrodiil, the heart of the Empire and the place where my ancestors had come from.

At the Clan Shatter-Shield offices, I was again momentarily caught off-guard by seeing a familiar face. The blue-skinned woman behind the entry counter was the same Dunmer I had seen being bullied by Rolff Stone-Fist and Angrenor Once-Honored. Rather than stare and risk being taken as rude, I quickly said hello and told her that Torbjorn Shatter-Shield had asked for me. She told me that he was out of the city on business, but that she would be happy to help me if she could. I passed over my forged letter and hoped that she wouldn't see through my cunning deception. The nameplate on her desk listed her as Suvaris Atheron. I genuinely hoped that I wouldn't have to say her name; I might not have disliked elves as the Nords did, but saying their names always made my tongue feel strange.

"You want to be a sailor?" she asked in a lilting voice. I nodded and she continued to scan the letter. "It says here that your mother has given permission for you to work for the clan, and that you just turned thirteen. Is that right?" I nodded again. She reached into the desk, pulled out some sort of stamp, and stamped the letter. Then she put it into an envelope, sealed it shut with wax, and put it into the same drawer the stamp had come out of. I waited expectantly.

"You won't be getting your sign-on pay until Lord Shatter-Shield gets back into Windhelm and confirms the letter," she said sternly. I got the impression she had been required to tell people this very thing before.

"When will I be getting on a ship?" I asked, nervous. I was worried that the longer this took, the more chances there were for my lie to be found out. There was no way it was this simple.

"When Lord Shatter-Shield says you do," she snapped. Her face softened slightly, and she continued. "Because of the recent pirate problems and the civil war, things are a little shaky right now. If Lord Shatter-Shield said he wants you on his crew, he meant it. But he won't be back in Windhelm until his business is taken care of, which might not be until Frostfall. After that, he could put you on a boat within a week—or it could be longer. It would have to be either before the bay ices over or after it thaws next year."

I nodded my understanding and left. It could be as soon as Frostfall or as late as next spring. I supposed that, all things considered, it was the mildest way that things could have gone wrong. It was a little disappointing to have gotten myself all worked up to go only to find out that it could be another six or nine months. Still, "A Kiss, Sweet Mother" had said that the Dread Lord Sithis rewards patience, so I had learned how to be patient. It had worked out pretty well for me since coming back to Windhelm. Patience it was, then.

Pulling myself into bed that night, I still dreamed of being an assassin and not a sailor, but I knew now that it was best to take the opportunities that life presented to you. Being a dispenser of the Night Mother's justice was a beautiful dream—but a dream was all it would ever be. Lord Shatter-Shield's job offer was real, and it was here. I didn't know if being a sailor would make me happy or not, but for the first time ever I felt the real thrill that came from having prospects—from having a future.

For the next several months, I kept up my work as a dockhand and earned a small but regular living. If things had gone differently, I might even have made a good sailor. But it was not meant to be. By the time Frostfall came my life's path would indeed be chosen, for good or ill—but it did not involve the sea…

* * *

_…to be continued…_


	6. Chapter 6: Autumn Leavings

**Chapter 6: Autumn Leavings**

By Frostfall, my life had fallen into a peaceful routine. Rain or shine, I was on the docks to fish and run messages. Since midsummer, I had even convinced the Argonians to start letting me help out with loading and unloading ships for a few coins. It wasn't glamorous or even steady work but it supplemented my fishing enough to let me occasionally eat fresh vegetables along with my fish. I wasn't worried about going broke suddenly and starving anymore. I was even shocked to find that my small pile of septims was growing rather than shrinking.

Waiting for Torbjorn Shatter-Shield to come back to Windhelm had replaced my previous ambition of waiting for the Dark Brotherhood to come and fix my life. Some nights I found myself wondering about how passive I had become, but the truth was that I had only been proactive about leaving the orphanage because my life had been on the line. Months of solitude and waiting had taken away that drive, replaced it with caution and passivity. Now, I was just counting out the days until the next thing came along.

The thing that came along was nothing I could have expected.

One afternoon in early Frostfall I was on my way home from the docks, whistling a bright tune and feeling the jingle of coins in my pocket, when I came around a corner and came face to face with a big group of Nord kids. I knew them all, though I hadn't seen most of them since I had come back to Windhelm. There were maybe seven of them all told, ranging from a year or two younger than me all the way up to a few years older. The oldest and biggest of them was Haakig, who was maybe fourteen but nearly as tall as a grown man.

"Hey, Aretino," Haakig said conversationally as I took a step backward and gaped. We had never been friends—Haakig used to make fun of me when I was younger—but some of his crew was kids I knew, that I had played with only a couple of years ago. I saw Lasskar and Vigurl Deep-Water, twin brothers with blonde hair and impish face; the three of us used to play tag in the streets around the Stone Quarter. Behind them was Haakig's long-time toady Saeda, a reedy and pimple-faced youth with all of Haakig's height and none of his width. The rest I didn't know by name, but they were all Nords—and unless I missed my guess, all of their fathers were off with the Stormcloaks.

"Haakig," I said, keeping my tone as neutral as possible.

"You haven't been around much," he continued, peaceably enough. "Heard you got shipped off to Honorhall by the steward. Guess you got back into town."

"Guess I did." Were they going to report me?

"Funny thing is, we had to hear that from Grimvar." I wondered if they had been hanging out together, or if Grimvar said something after they beat him up. I really didn't know where this was going. "I didn't believe him at first. I mean, surely Aventus Aretino would have come to see some of his old friends if he were really in Windhelm."

"If I knew I meant so much to you, Haakig," I said, beginning to weary of the verbal jousting, "I would have come to see you right away." His face tightened as the Deep-Water brothers snickered behind him, but he quickly composed himself.

"I heard the reason you didn't come see any of your old friends was that you been busy. Heard you been down on the docks, helping the scale-skins steal our daddies' jobs." So it was going to be that kind of conversation then. I wasn't really surprised, except maybe that it had taken them so long.

"If you father wants a job that badly," I said, keeping my eyes fixed on his, "I'm sure they're hiring. There's never enough bodies to get everything done…" He stepped in and grabbed me by the shirt collar before I could finish. His face had gone from pretend-friendly to genuine rage faster than I could follow.

"My father is off in the Reach," he snarled, "fighting the good fight. And while he's away, those green bastards are taking his job!" I goggled for a moment, more confused than hurt despite the knuckles digging into my collarbone. Did he expect the work to stop while his father was away? Or did he expect the Argonians to not do the only thing they were allowed to do to make a living? Haakig dragged me a few paces and slammed my back into the rough stone wall of the alley. He leaned in close enough that I could smell his mead-stained breath when he spoke.

"My momma can't afford to feed my baby brother and me on her washing up for the Shatter-Shields," he growled at me. "I figure you're stealing my daddy's job, you can help pay for our meals. Hand over what you got, or else."

Haakig's attempt to be frightening was almost laughable. I had been alone on the road with bandits, bears, and dragons for months, survived sickness and loneliness, and stolen my mother's bones for a dark rite. After the beatings I had received at the hands of Grelod the Kind, anything physical this petulant teenager could do to me would seem like a warm embrace. Still, I had to take a moment to think about it. Not because of fear—but because of pragmatism.

My survival in Windhelm had been based around one simple principle: invisibility. Not literally, like I had heard mages could do, but the subtle art of being beneath notice. Adults ignored children who didn't make a fuss, and children ignored other children who weren't part of their social group. By not playing with other kids, I had made myself invisible to them. By not needing adults, I had become invisible to them as well. I had managed to gain the attention of an adult without raising a fuss, which turned out to be a good thing for me—but now I had managed to gain Haakig's attention from the same thing, which was less so.

The only money I had on me was my day's pay, a few measly septims. When I started getting paid, a kindly Argonian woman named Shahvee had advised me to never keep more on me than I needed. That same advice had come from my assassin a few months earlier, so I was already in the habit of hiding my money under the floorboards in my house. So submitting to their demands wouldn't cost me more than a half-dozen coins… and the knowledge that they could do it again. If giving them everything I had now would buy them off permanently it's a price I would have paid gladly, but I wasn't naïve enough to believe they'd leave me alone in the future.

I also had to consider escalation; would paying them off now keep them from escalating up to violence in the future? Would it even keep them from beating me up after I gave them the money? More than likely, they would take my coins, claim that it "wasn't enough," and beat me anyway. I had seen how their kind worked before. I wasn't afraid of being hurt, really, only of losing days of work from injuries.

More than any of that, though, more than logic or reason or pragmatism, something in me stirred. I remembered standing by and doing nothing when Suvaris was being bullied by the Nord men. A fiery feeling built up in my gut at the idea of letting these self-entitled bastards run roughshod over me just because of my blood. And I had _earned_ those septims, Divines damn their eyes! I would rather be beaten than give up something I had earned with my own hands.

I didn't know where my sudden ferocity had come from but some of it must have leaked through into my eyes, because Haakig suddenly let go of my collar and took a step back. He rallied quickly and straightened himself up. I sketched out my next few moves in my head as fast as I could manage. If I did any of it wrong, I would wind up getting beaten to a pulp.

"Well, you dirty Imperial?" he spat the word like a curse. "What about it?"

"Haakig," I said mildly, drawing myself up to my full height, "if you want septims so bad, why don't you go down to the dock to get a job yourself? I'm sure they could use your fat head for an anchor."

Haakig screamed wordlessly and his fist came tearing through the air toward my face. The others all leaned in slightly to watch me get my teeth knocked in. At the last second, right before his knuckles connected with my nose, I let my knees unlock and dropped below his swing. Haakig's vicious war-cry turned into a bloodcurdling scream of pain as he shattered his hand on the stone wall behind me, but I didn't give him a second to recover. From my crouched stance, I leaned forward on the balls of my feet and stood up again as fast as I could. Haakig's swing had put his face forward of his chest, so the crown of my head went straight up into his chin. My skull crushed his teeth together hard enough that I heard something break and I saw stars myself.

That was the moment I learned that head-butts don't help anyone in a fight.

My head ached like someone had dropped an iron kettle on it, but I couldn't afford to take the time to let the hurting stop. While the others were still goggling over what had happened, I put both of my hands on Haakig's chest and pushed him into the Deep-Water brothers. They all went sprawling down together, and my first step away from the wall was right onto Haakig's stomach. His breath whooshed out between his cracked and bloody teeth as I used him as a springboard to launch myself onto the nearby stairs. The rest of his gang was still staring at him instead of me by the time I rounded the corner and started ascending to Windhelm proper.

I was about halfway up the stairs when I heard Haakig's gurgling cry of "Get him!" and the sound of feet pounding on stone after me. That cold, angry place inside me seethed that I should have taken the extra second to kick him in the face while he was down, and then I was too busy running for my life to worry about should-have-done. I didn't glance back as I ran, but the huffing and puffing growing closer proved to me that Haakig's voice still had enough authority to get at least some of them to chase me.

My house was only a few streets down once I mounted the top of the stairs, but I didn't run for it. The time it would take me to get my door unlocked and open would be the time they needed to catch me. Instead, I took a left and tore across the Stone Quarter at full speed. I dodged among merchants, visitors, and horse-drawn wagons on their way to market. The bigger boys had a harder time moving through the traffic, and I heard them get cursed at by passersby more than once.

About halfway across the Stone Quarter was a stone platform on which stood an iron brazier that was kept full of burning coals at all hours of the day and night. A rag-clad homeless woman was warming her hands over the embers, her tired and lined face showing a lifetime full of sorrows. I skidded on the cobblestones, took a sharp turn around the platform, and virtually threw myself to the ground on the other side of it. With any luck, the big oafs would go thundering right past me, then I would be able to double back and get to my house without any trouble.

No such luck. I heard the thudding footsteps stop right on the other side of the platform, close enough that if one of them took three paces forward they would see me. I heard Haakig's wounded, wet voice drift down across the crackling of burning coals.

"You see a li'l runt come froo 'ere?" _Did you see some little runt come through here?_ he was trying to say through a mouthful of broken teeth.

"Spare a coin for an old woman?" the beggar replied. I heard a sharp sound of flesh on flesh, and I could almost mentally see Haakig slapping the woman's hand away.

"You see 'im or not, you ol' crone?" he demanded.

"He went that way," she said in a plaintive tone, though I couldn't see which way she pointed. "Just a moment ago."

"Come on!" Haakig shouted at his cronies. I tensed for a fight. When I heard them running the other way, I was surprised. I didn't relax, but I carefully leaned out from my hiding place to see their backs vanishing down a side street.

"They're gone now," the old woman croaked. "They were rude. I didn't like them."

"My thanks, old mother," I said as politely as I could manage. I rummaged through my pockets until I found my septims and pressed two of them into her rag-covered hands. Her old face lit up like I had dropped a fortune into her lap.

"Divines bless your kind heart!" she cried as I took off toward home as quickly as I could manage. It felt different to give money to someone who needed it than to have it taken from you by force, I mused as I ran. I thought about the Dark Brotherhood, how they wouldn't put up with this kind of treatment. I enjoyed a brief fantasy of coming in through Haakig's window one night with a knife and threatening him until he wept for his mother. But I was no assassin, no dark-clad avenger. I didn't want to kill anyone… Did I?

Somewhere deep inside me, a boiling rage was building. I had managed to escape them this time, but what about next time? I hated that I had gotten away only to have to worry about a "next time." Death was a final solution. If you killed someone, they would never come back to hurt you again. Murder solved problems. The fact that I had summoned an assassin to kill Grelod proved that there were other people who believed the same as me.

Still, Grelod had been a monster. Haakig was just a bully—a boy not much older than me. She had been hurting people a long time and wouldn't stop until someone stopped her. He was still young enough to change. Haakig might decide that getting hurt wasn't worth his time. That I was beneath his notice.

Yeah, and horkers might fly.

As I ducked and weaved through alleys on the way back to my house, I nearly ran right out into the courtyard that separated my home from the Gray Quarter. Fortunately, I caught myself up short at the end of the alley and took a moment to look around. My instincts proved to be right as I saw one of Haakig's cronies, a boy about my age with a harelip, crouched down behind a rain barrel, trying to look nonchalant as he watched my front door. Haakig was more cunning than I thought.

I thought briefly about just jumping the watcher, but my "success" against Haakig had been based entirely on surprise and it had still left me with a rapidly growing knot on my skull. I wasn't yet self-assured enough to think I could anyone in a fair fight. Instead, I quickly searched the alley and found a loose cobblestone. I waited for the watcher to be looking right at the door, then chucked the rock as hard as I could into another alley. Then I ducked behind a trash bin and peered out between the wooden slats.

Sure enough, the clatter of the stone and shriek of an alley cat drew the boy's attention. He rushed toward the source of the noise, and I darted across the courtyard to my door, fishing my key out of my pocket as I ran. I spared a glance at the boy as the door opened—he was still searching the alley for signs of me—and rushed inside. Rather than slam the door behind me, I closed it as quietly as I could manage, then locked it again from the inside. I darted up the stairs to the small room above them and looked out the window cautiously. Sure enough, my quick thinking had paid off, and the sentry was apparently unaware that I had made it past him. He returned to his "hiding" spot and continued to watch the door.

I didn't light a fire even though it was cold. Instead, I hooded a lantern, covered myself in blankets, and ate a meal of cold bread and cheese while re-reading _A Kiss, Sweet Mother_. Give it enough time, I figured, and they would give up. I would be a little more cautious while I was out—only travel while there were adults in sight, move with groups, keep my head down. In only a few months at most, I would be leaving Windhelm anyway—and maybe as soon as the end of the month.

As I slowly lulled myself to sleep with the Night Mother's prayer of vengeance, I was content. I had dodged the worst they could throw at me, and in a few days at most, they would forget all about me.

* * *

By the end of the week, I was beginning to realize that I didn't really understand people at all.

The morning after my little escape, I got up well rested and barely aching at all from using my head as a weapon. I ate a small breakfast of cold bread and cheese, then grabbed my fishing line and got dressed for the day. I walked down the stairs, opened the door, and found myself shocked into total paralysis when I saw Haakig's gang—minus their leader—milling about on the far side of the plaza. One of them looked right at me as I stood there, and only the sight of the Deep-Water brothers hoofing it toward me at top speed broke my paralysis. I slammed the door as hard as I could and threw the locks just in time for Lasskar (or maybe Vigurl) to thud into the other side.

I leaned my back into the door and braced my feet against the floor—as though there was any chance at all that I could hold the door against them if they managed to break it down. Fortunately, they didn't even try. After kicking it a couple of times, I heard one of them say, "Hey, Aretino."

"What do you want?" I asked, as though the answer weren't "to kick your face in."

"Me and Lasskar," Vigurl said, "we don't want nothing. But you hurt Haakig pretty bad, and he wants your hide."

"Not my fault he started a fight he couldn't win," I said before I could catch myself. To my surprise, they both laughed out loud.

"True enough, little man," Lasskar added. "You knocked his teeth out, right and proper. Problem is, Haakig's our friend. And friends stick up for each other."

"Six on one?" I asked, my back starting to go chilly from leaning on the door. "Real fair of you."

"Fair ain't got nothing to do with it," one of them said. I could no longer keep track of who was speaking at what time. Even with my eyes on them, I could only ever tell Lasskar and Vigurl apart by the thin scar Lasskar had over his left eye. "Someone hurts one of your crew, you hurt him back. Haakig lost face-"

"Ha!" the other one interrupted. "Lost face! Because you knocked his teeth in!"

"Shut up," the first one said mildly. "You cost Haakig respect, and it's up to us to beat it out of you. You don't let that sort of thing slide when you're with a crew."

"Well, then," I responded with more bravado than I felt, "I suppose it's a good thing you're out there and I'm in here. Not like you can break the door in without the guards getting involved, even nowadays."

"Stay in there as long as you want, little man," Lasskar (or Vigurl) said with low menace. "You have a house, but we got all the time in the world."

With that, I heard their footsteps retreat. I thought it might be a trick at first but after ten minutes of standing stock-still, waiting for the faintest trace of noise, I decided that they had really left the door. I climbed up to the loft above the door and risked a look out the window. The group of them were back to hanging out across the plaza, casually standing around or sitting on crates and barrels. Saeda was eating an apple when he noticed me watching them, then cocked back his arm and threw what was left of it hard enough to bounce off the glass and rattle the pane. I jerked away from the impact in surprise, and I could hear all them burst out laughing.

Fine then, I fumed to myself. I knew how to be patient. I had locked myself away for months while I was waiting for the Dark Brotherhood to contact me—alone in a house with a corpse and a book, starving and half-mad. Now, I had money, I had food, I had peace of mind. It would be easy to wait them out.

By the end of a week, I was starting to remember what it was like to feel desperate. I had been out of the house a handful of times, but always at night. During the day, whenever I would have been working or fishing or shopping for food, I would look out the window and see them waiting for me. It wasn't always all of them; more often than not, it was just one or two. Still, I didn't fancy my odds when it came to a straight fight against bigger and older kids.

Once or twice, I was almost tricked into coming out while they were waiting for me. I would look outside and not see them, but right before opening the door I would get a nagging sensation of danger. Instead of ignoring it, I went back upstairs and waited; inevitably, within a few minutes, I would see one of them hiding in a crowd, or casually leaning on a wall just out of my normal field of view. Then I would go back to sitting on my bed and reading the only book I owned.

After the second time that happened, I waited until nightfall to try and slip outside. Fortunately, there was a curfew in effect because the jarl was worried about crime for some reason. I had heard rumors about a girl getting killed, but I didn't know much more about it than that. If I got caught after hours, I would probably go back to Honorhall; if one of them got caught, their mothers would hear about it, which wouldn't do well for any of them. If I hadn't been able to slip out to the docks at night to go fishing, I probably would have run out of food much sooner.

The night was more my friend than theirs, but it still kept me from replenishing my fresh foods or spending any of the money I had. And every minute I was out of the house, I was worried that one of them had been waiting and gone off to get the others—that they were creeping up on me, just out of sight… I spent more time looking over my shoulder than watching my line during the few hours I was able to get out of the house and go fishing.

For a few days, I considered going to the Argonian assemblage at night and asking them for help. I had gotten along well enough with the Argonians that I worked alongside down on the docks, and at least one of them had apparently recommended me to Torbjorn Shatter-Shield, but ultimately I decided against it. While they might be able to help me, I didn't want to risk Haakig's gang harassing them too. Well, no more than they probably already were. No, bringing them in wouldn't help me in the long run, and might well hurt them.

I was also very worried that I might miss my meeting with Torbjorn Shatter-Shield. What if he came into port and saw that I wasn't on the docks? Would he decide that I had become lazy and decide not to take me? Worse, would he come looking for me and find out that I had lied about who I was? I tried not to let it bother me, but my whole future seemed thrown back into disarray because of one moment of forgetting to be invisible.

During the days I was cooped up, I thought a lot about the choices that had brought me to the state I was in. Finally, after a whole week of being trapped in my own home, I came to an epiphany. Haakig was back with his friends for the first time since I had hurt him. Looking out the window, I watched the seven of them standing together, laughing and sharing food, and for just a moment I envied them.

Haakig was missing teeth, showing their still-bloody gaps when he laughed, and I felt a terrible hatred building up in me—not because he had tried to hurt me, but because he was surrounded by people who cared. I had spent the last year convincing myself that I was okay alone, that I even liked being alone. Watching them now, I realized that while the first part of that might be true—I had gotten pretty good at taking care of myself, after all—the second part was definitely a lie.

The truth I had spent so long ignoring was that I was terribly lonely. Now, I couldn't pretend anymore. Seeing how well the seven of them worked together, even if it was at something as petty and awful as bullying, it made me miss the other kids back at Honorhall. Knowing they had mothers to go home to at night made me miss mine. They could play games, and watch each other's backs, and fight together—the way I imagined the Dark Brotherhood would be.

They were friends.

They were a family.

And I had nothing but an empty house and a few septims and a half-promise from a man I didn't know.

That was when I started crying. I wept for myself now, for how little I had and how much I envied the things that Haakig and his friends took for granted every day. By the time I was done crying, I had made my decision. Come the morning, I would go to the city guards and turn myself in. I would say that I was sorry for running away and ask to be sent back to Honorhall. I had my vengeance; now it was time to do my civic duty and go back to the orphanage. I would leave a note for Lord Shatter-Shield admitting the truth. If I was very lucky, he might even forgive me and agree to take me on once I was old enough to sign for myself.

It would be nice to see Runa and Samuel and Hroar. I wondered if any of them had been adopted while I was away. If so, good for them; I would make new friends with the new kids. With Constance in charge of the orphanage, there was even a chance I would be adopted. It wouldn't be like having my mother back, but it would be nice to have someone else take care of me for a while…

And I drifted off to sleep.

* * *

That night, well after midnight, I came awake convinced that someone was in the room with me. The fire had long since gone out, so it was fairly chilly and dark. I held perfectly still and controlled my breathing, letting my eyes adjust to the near-blackness. Had Haakig gotten the lock open somehow? A floorboard creaked. Someone was definitely in the room with me.

Then that someone stubbed her toe on the edge of my bed and cursed out loud. I sat upright in my bed; there were no girls in Haakig's gang. Tentatively, I called out.

"H- hello?" I said. "Is someone there?"

"Sorry about that," said a familiar woman's voice. "I didn't mean to wake you. Well, I was going to wake you, but I didn't want it to be-" She paused. "Never mind. Turn your eyes away. I'm going to get some light in here." I did as I was told, and when I had adjusted to the new light from the lantern, I was ecstatic to see its bearer. Sitting in a chair next to my bed, gingerly rubbing her right foot where she had stubbed her toes, was my assassin.

"You came back to check on me!" I exclaimed. It wasn't really a question. She promised that she would check up on me, so I knew she would do it. I had always known in my heart that she would come back to see me again someday, but I hadn't thought it would be so soon.

"Well, I came back for more than that, if you agree." She looked at me intensely with her bright blue eyes, long dark hair falling across her shoulders in an unselfconscious way. The lantern light made her seem somehow severe, more than she had ever seemed while we were discussing the death of a human being.

"Aventus…" she said, and the room's windows rattled briefly. I looked at them, wondering if an autumn storm was rolling in. She paused again, sighing deeply; she seemed like she wanted to say something but didn't quite know how. She continued finally, quieter now—quiet enough that when she got the words out, I wasn't sure I had heard her correctly. I asked her to repeat herself and leaned closer.

"I said, 'Do you want to come with me and be an assassin?' It would be a tough life, Aventus, and-"

"Yes," I said as quickly as I could, once I was sure what she was asking.

"Don't you even want to know-"

"No," I interrupted again. "You're a family, right? And you kill bad people?"

"It's not that simple," she said, frowning slightly. "There are rules, training…" She shook all of that off and fixed me with a stern gaze. "But all of that is secondary. There's really only one thing you have to do, Aventus. If you want to join the Dark Brotherhood, there can't be any negotiation about it."

"Am I going to be an assassin?"

"Yes," she said somberly. "You just have to prove you can kill someone for me."

"And then I'll have a new family?" I asked. She nodded again. I looked her in the eyes and said the words that changed my life. "I want to be a Dark Brotherhood assassin. I want to help people like you helped me."

Her face scrunched up for a moment, like she had been hoping I would say no. Or maybe she had just been expecting me to say no. The truth was that from the moment she had asked the question, there was no choice at all for me. I had dreamed of it for months on end. There was nothing in the world that I wanted more than the two things she offered me: a family, and the chance to bring other people the same justice that I had sent to Grelod. She stood up and held her hand out to me. Without a moment's hesitation, I reached out and took it.

Murder could solve so many problems, after all.

* * *

_…to be continued…_


	7. Chapter 7: The Dark Brotherhood

**Chapter 7: The Dark Brotherhood**

It was time.

The knife was cold in my hand. The man in front of me was bound to a chair. On either side of him stood a Dark Brotherhood assassin waiting for me to make my choice. The room was dim, with a few candles standing in a circle around my victim. Hecate—my assassin—stood behind me with her hands on my shoulders and her lips next to my ear. She whispered words of encouragement to me even as the man before me pleaded for his life. Dust motes flickered in and out of sight as they danced with the candlelight.

It was a frozen moment, one that will live on in me forever.

I made my choice.

* * *

It had been a day and a night since my assassin came back into my life.

Once she had woken me from my slumber, she explained to me that she needed me to clear out certain parts of my home so that I could complete my test. She also explained to me that before I could learn anything more, before I could become a true member of the Dark Brotherhood, I had to take a life. I had to prove to her that I could kill on command—not just to kill, but to kill who she said and when she said to do it. She was quite grave when she explained this to me, and I knew that it was non-negotiable.

Once she was gone I was too excited to sleep, so I cleaned the house. It was pretty clean from my previous efforts, but knowing that the Dark Brotherhood themselves would be visiting my home made me want to make the place even nicer. I felt a little ashamed of the state it had been in when she had come to see me the first time, but there was nothing I could do about it now. I spent the rest of the night sweeping and polishing the floors, moving furniture, and putting away dishware.

When I was done with all the chores I could manage, with dawn just beginning to turn the eastern sky pink, I realized that I had agreed to kill a human being. I looked deep inside myself to see if there was some part of me that objected to the idea. I had asked the Dark Brotherhood to kill Grelod, but it was different to kill someone yourself. Wasn't it? I sat up all morning wondering about that separation.

Around noon, I was shocked to hear the front door opening. Had my assassin forgotten to lock it? Rushing to the stairs I saw a strange man entering. He had dark skin and piercing eyes, and he dressed in strange, foreign robes. As I looked at him in shock, his hard and cruel-looking face suddenly breaking into a wide, friendly smile.

"You must be Aventus," he said in a rumbling voice. I could only nod, my mouth agape. "I'm Nazir. Hecate sent me."

"Who?" I asked dumbly. He quirked an eyebrow at me and the corner of his mouth turned up into a sardonic smirk.

"Didn't introduce herself, eh?" His voice was loaded with sarcasm and a kind of humor that I didn't understand. "Well, she knows you. Killed a woman for you, even."

"Oh!" I said suddenly. By then, I was sure he thought I was simple or soft in the head, and my face started to burn. "You mean the woman who…" I paused. I had never talked about this with anyone before.

"Killed Grelod?" he finally finished for me. I nodded to him, casting down my eyes so that I wouldn't have to meet his gaze. He belly laughed as he sat down on a wooden stool. He ran a hand across his eyes, flicked the tears away, and finally reached out to tilt my chin up so I was looking at him again.

"Boy," he started, "I have never in my many years seen someone so embarrassed about helping people." I felt electrified suddenly; he said I had helped people! "I've done a lot of killing and sent a lot of people out to kill in my time. But never before Grelod the Kind had I heard of a Black Sacrament so completely justified. Old crone had it coming."

I sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, my eyes wide and staring. My mouth hung open. He was saying the very words I had thought so many times before leaving Honorhall and all the things I had said to myself to justify the Black Sacrament after I left it.

"So, out of professional curiosity," he asked mildly, "where did you get the effigy for the ritual?"

"My mother," I murmured. He cocked his head and looked at me quizzically. "My mother died almost-" I paused. Divines, had it really been so long? "Almost two years ago. I ran away from the orphanage and came back to Windhelm, then I stole her body from the Hall of the Dead." I waited for him to lash out at me, to chastise me, but he only nodded sagely.

"That's clever," he said with something that I thought might be admiration. "Not many people would have the strength to carry through with something like that. I can see why Hecate thinks you're special."

"She does?" I asked dumbly.

"Well, yes. Do you think we invite children to join the Brotherhood every day?"

"I'm not a child." I finally looked him right in the eyes, staring at him defiantly. I might have only been twelve years old then, but my childhood had ended long before. He met my gaze for a long time, his near-black eyes seeming to bore into my soul. Neither of us flinched. Finally, he nodded respectfully.

"No," he rumbled, "I suppose you aren't, at that." He looked around the main room of the house critically, and I was suddenly irrationally glad that I had taken the time to clean up. "You know what you have to do if you want to join us?" he asked without looking at me.

"Yes," I said with what sounded like resolution.

"Good," he replied. "Then I don't have to go over that part with you. What I'm here to do, Aventus, is to teach you about all of the other things—the ones that Hecate probably didn't get around to. And once that's done, I have to get your house ready for your test."

"What sort of things?" I asked, genuinely curious.

"The first thing you need to know is that the woman who killed Grelod for you—Hecate—is our leader." I goggled in open awe. I hadn't gotten just any assassin, but the leader of the Dark Brotherhood! "She's called 'the Listener,' and she's our link to the Night Mother."

"I read about the Night Mother!" I said excitedly. "Sweet mother, sweet mother, send your child unto me-"

"For the sins of the unworthy must be baptized in blood and fear," he finished. "The words of the Black Sacrament. It's our most important prayer. I know you've read the book—otherwise you wouldn't have caught our attention in the first place." I nodded, careful to keep quiet now lest I say something else foolishly obvious. "Anyway. The Night Mother is… Well, she's our icon, I suppose you'd say. She's the reason we're different from simple hired thugs and murderers. She gives us purpose.

"The Listener is the only person with the ability to hear the Night Mother's words. Anytime someone says the Black Sacrament, the Night Mother hears it—and if she judges the plea to be worthy, she passes on the message to the Listener. In turn, the Listener gives the mission to a Speaker—like me—who arranges for someone to make contact with the person who performed the sacrament. The Speaker meets with the supplicant and negotiates a price for the deed." He smiled at this part. "Our prices are fair and negotiable; we never charge more than a person can pay." He winked at me. "Of course, we never charge less than they can pay either."

I nodded to indicate my understanding. So far he hadn't said anything that contradicted my view of the Brotherhood. I was thrilled to think that someone as important as the leader of the Dark Brotherhood had decided to come and take my case personally. Everything he said only made my faith in the Brotherhood and their methods grow. Nazir's pleasant, rumbling voice and engaging way of speaking drew me in completely.

"If you pass your test," he said in a way that made it clear he had no opinion about it one way or the other, "then you will be expected to train, to hone your skills, to improve as an assassin. These are not obligations from the Night Mother; they're simply what you will have to do in order to survive. Our life is not an easy one, Aventus. It can be dangerous, painful, and even maddening." As he said these things, I got the impression that there was someone specific he was thinking about, but I did not interrupt.

"However, this life is also rewarding. And not just in coin. The Brotherhood is a family, first and foremost, and our only rules are about protecting the sanctity and safety of that family."

"Rules?" I asked, finally unable to keep my questions in.

"Yes," he nodded, "five of them. We call them the Tenets, and they are the only law that any assassin obeys. No king, no jarl, no chieftain can constrain you from your duty save by force of arms. Once you become an assassin, you belong to no nation, no people, no tribe save ours. We are your family from the moment you take a life in our name, and only the Night Mother and her children may judge you worthy or lacking."

"What are the five rules?" I pressed.

"First, you must respect the Night Mother," he replied, ticking the rules off one by one on his fingers. "You must never betray the Brotherhood or its secrets. You must always obey your superiors—so generally, the Listener and the Speaker. You must never steal from one of your brothers or sisters. And you must never kill one of your brothers or sisters. To break any of these rules is to invoke the wrath of the Dread Lord Sithis." He turned his hand around toward me so that I was looking at his palm, the fingers splayed out. It was like the symbol in the book.

"Five fingers to make a hand," he said, "and five fingers curled together to make a fist. That's the way of the Dark Brotherhood." He dropped his hand back to his lap, and for the first time I noticed that his other hand was on top of the hilt of his curved sword. He saw me looking at the blade and simply continued as though nothing unusual was going on. "The Brotherhood has a long and rich history… none of which is really important to you right now. If you join us, then I'll be the one primarily responsible for your training and education, and you'll have ample free time between missions for personal business."

"That's it?" I asked.

"What do you mean?" asked Nazir.

"I mean… It just seems simpler than I expected." Nazir surprised me by taking his hand off his sword and covering his mouth as he burst out laughing again.

"It always does to the young," he said when he finally regained control of his voice. "You may not be a child, Aventus, but you're definitely not an adult yet. Things become more complicated as you get older, and sometimes the things that seemed very simple at thirteen seem impossibly convoluted at thirty." He stood up from his stool, and I followed suit. "Now that you know the rules, it's time to get to work."

"What do I need to do?" I asked, eager for my time with the Brotherhood to begin.

"Nothing yet," he said, glancing around the house. "You've already done an excellent job clearing out the space we'll need for later. I just have to go over some basic details. Check the windows, muffle the glass, make sure that there's nothing our target can use against us…"

"You're going to kill someone in my house?" I exclaimed suddenly. I had thought they were going to take me somewhere else so I could prove myself, not here in my own home.

"Is that a problem?" Nazir asked, his eyes fixed on me critically. I paused, realizing that this was part of the test too. While I was a little uncomfortable with it, I realized that it was just a lingering territoriality more than anything practical.

"No," I responded, straightening my back and meeting Nazir's eyes. "No, it's no problem."

He nodded, then proceeded to inspect the area critically. From time to time, he would move something or open a drawer to look inside it. I felt embarrassed, like he was searching me personally. At long last he finished his inspection and told me that he would be coming back at sunset to finish preparations. He recommended that I get some rest before then, and I suddenly realized that I was genuinely exhausted. I was barely able to see Nazir out before the fatigue overcame me and I collapsed into my bed, dreaming of the night to come.

* * *

I woke up to someone shaking my shoulder. It was pitch black outside and the interior was lit only by the glow of candles. I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and looked up into the kindly face of Hecate, my assassin. She wore the robes of a priestess of Talos, and I wondered briefly if I was dreaming. Her hand was too warm and solid for a dream, though, and I finally was able to gather my wits enough to speak.

"Is it time?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper. "Am I going to be a Dark Brotherhood assassin?"

"That depends on you, Aventus," she said with a slight, sad smile. "You just need to prove you can kill someone for me."

"I want to be a Dark Brotherhood assassin. I want to help people like you helped me," I said, repeating the words I had said the night before. "Whatever I have to do, I'll do it." She nodded at me and her face became grave, almost mask-like. She took my hand as she had the previous night, but now it was a firm grip.

She led me away from my bed near the fire to the room that used to be my mother's. A blanket had been hung across the doorway to give the room a sense of privacy. A few candles were placed on the windowsill, giving off enough light for me to make out four people. Nazir stood at the doorway, holding open the curtain respectfully for Hecate and me to pass through. At the rear of the small chamber were two figures silhouetted by the candlelight. I could barely make either of them out, save that one was a man and the other a Khajit—and both sported huge, toothy grins.

The last man was clearly intended to be my victim. He was a burly Nord tied to a chair in the middle of the room. His face was bruised in places and a few scratches marred his cheeks and bare chest. He was moaning lightly and was clearly just beginning to come to consciousness after having been roughly knocked out. As he looked up and opened his eyes, I felt my mouth drop open at realizing the identity of the man they had chosen for my victim.

"This is the man you have to kill," Hecate said seriously, not acknowledging my shock.

"I know that man. He's-" I stammered, trying to cover my true emotions. "He's at the Candlehearth a lot."

I carefully studied the face of the man as Hecate rambled about his evils and his crimes. I didn't need to hear any of it. I already knew this man's true nature. I had seen it the day he and Angrenor Once-Honored had threatened an innocent Dunmer woman while I cowered in fear. I had seen the face of Rolff Stone-Fist in my nightmares for a year, taunting me for my cowardice and my selfishness.

Truly, the Night Mother had chosen to bless me.

"Rolff has gone past simply taunting 'lesser races,'" Hecate continued, finally getting through the sound of my blood pounding in my ears. "A couple of weeks ago Rolff killed an Argonian." I turned to look at Hecate's face, but she wasn't looking at me anymore. She was staring straight at Rolff with an expression I could only interpret as disgust. "She was a kind and gentle soul who saw only the good in life. She smiled when others couldn't—because she wanted to be happy more than sad. She was supposed to be married soon."

"Little boy," Rolff cried suddenly, straining at his bonds, "don't listen to that woman! Run and get help!" The man behind him stepped forward and started to reach for him, but Hecate waved him back. He struggled uselessly against the ropes for a moment before finally settling back down. His muscles continued to strain and twist as he looked for any purchase to attempt an escape.

"Rolff saw her in the city one night," Hecate continued as though there had never been an interruption, "and killed her. He decided that a 'dirty lizard' didn't deserve to be in the city limits. And he beat her to death. Shahvee was supposed to be married the next day.'

This time my shock was genuine instead of feigned. Shahvee was dead? She had always been so kind to me while I was working, and I had long suspected that she was the one who recommended me to Torbjorn Shatter-Shield. How could she be dead? I had just seen her… As I thought about it, I realized that I hadn't seen anyone in well over a week, and even before that I hadn't seen Shahvee down at the docks for at least a few days, maybe longer. She had been dead all that time. And I hadn't even known.

My breathing went shallow, and my eyes started to fill with tears. That's when Hecate put the knife in my hands. It was a plain iron dagger, no different than any cutting tool in my kitchen except for the hilt, which was wrapped in black leather. It was cold as death in my hand.

"If you do this," Hecate said, "it won't be easy for you or him. Rolff will bleed and beg—and it will probably take a long time." She knelt down and looked me in the eyes. "And he deserves it."

I wanted to tell her that I agreed with her, that I knew Shahvee and that anyone who could take her out of this world deserved to be cast into the Void. But I had a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes, and I knew that if I opened my mouth to speak only sobs would come out. I was angry at myself for being so happy about joining a new family when my happiness came from someone else's misery.

Not Rolff's, of course. He deserved every bit of pain I was about to give him. No, I was angry because I hadn't thought about the person we would be avenging tonight. I swore to myself that I would do this right—that I would remember Shahvee as I put Rolff out of the world and into the Dread Lord's horrible embrace. I would become an assassin, and I would make the world a better place.

I looked around the room, wanting to fix the moment in my mind forever so that I would never again forget why I was doing this. Nazir stood with his arms crossed, doing his best to look like a wooden statue, but he nodded his encouragement at me. The two others I didn't know had their enormous grins in place; they felt predatory, frightening. Rolff was cursing incoherently at all of us. I tuned him out.

"I want to be a Dark Brotherhood assassin," I said, pushing the words out through my teeth. "I want to help people."

And then the stabbing began.

At first my strikes were hesitant. I didn't know much about hurting people, and I was shocked at the spatter of blood that came after the first stroke. The second one was easier, and the third was easier still. Eventually I picked up a rhythm, stabbing and slashing in alternating strokes. Rolff screamed and his blood went everywhere. I was screaming myself, wordless noises of fury and horror. The moment was perfect, and it will live in my mind forever.

Rolff Stone-Fist died poorly.

* * *

I don't know how long it took me to kill Rolff. After that perfect, gleaming moment of righteousness, there was only the physical repetitiveness of murder. He screamed for a long time, it seemed like. I screamed too, until my throat was too hoarse to continue. Finally, after what seemed like forever, I drew my arm back for one last strike and I found Nazir's strong hand holding me back. I looked up at him, desperate and questioning. Had I failed?

"He's done, Aventus," Nazir said solemnly. "He's been dead for a while now. You can stop."

I let Nazir gingerly pull the knife from my hands and I forced myself to look upon my handiwork. It was true; he was dead. His body was covered in cuts and gouges from my sloppy knifework, and blood was pooled all around him on the floor. I had a confused moment where I wondered how I was ever going to clean it all up myself, and then I looked at my own hands. To say they were covered in blood was an understatement. I was soaked in the stuff, all the way up to my chest and shoulders, and a quick daub at my face made me certain that Rolff's bloodhad made its way there as well.

"Go clean yourself up," Nazir said to me with great patience. He looked up at the other man, the one who had stood in the shadows and watched with a mad smile the whole time I was passing my test. "Cicero, take him outside and make sure no one sees. There's a water trough right along the side of the building. I have to report to Hecate."

"As you wish, oh great and powerful Speaker," the man called Cicero said with an exaggerated and mocking bow. Nazir's face turned into a stern frown, and I could swear that his eye started twitching. "I will make sure no one disturbs the boy."

Cicero walked past me without a second glance, and I had to scurry along to follow him. Once he was no longer a black shadow backlit by candles, I could see that he was an Imperial. I thought he might be red-haired as well, but it was difficult to tell with his hair pushed up under a bright red jester's cap. He was covered head to toe in the motley of a southern gleeman, red and black crushed velvet whispering softly as he walked. It struck me how quietly the man moved; I could barely hear his clothes rustling when he walked past me, and once he was more than a few steps away, I could hear nothing at all.

I followed him outside, worried that someone would see me covered in blood and gore. By the time I got to the trough, I was more worried about freezing to death while I cleaned myself up. Windhelm is cool even in the summer, and in the middle of Frostfall… Well, the month lives up to its name in Windhelm. The water trough was slicked over with a thin layer of ice, and I just stared at it helplessly for a moment until Cicero pulled out his knife and cracked it with a bored sigh. I was shaking from the cold, and from a sick sensation that was building in my stomach.

As I scrubbed at my skin with freezing water, something plopped onto my shoulder. I jumped, sure that we had been caught, then I managed to wrap my hand around the object. It was a towel, wrapped neatly around a bar of soap.

"The boy has good reflexes," Cicero noted, looking out at the streets and not at me. "Cicero thought the boy might not remember, so he took the liberty of bringing soap and cloth along from the inn. Must clean all the hard to reach places!" he added cheerfully.

"But-" I started, then noticed that under Cicero's arm was tucked a folded set of clothes that looked suspiciously like mine. "Where did you get those?" I asked him.

"What?" he said, turning to look at me with an innocent face. "These old things? Why, Cicero just found them laying around while the boy was sleeping. If they should happen to fit the boy, that would be a happy coincidence!" He hummed to himself for a moment and danced a cheery jig. I covered my mouth with a hand and giggled. He was a very funny sort of man. I wondered if he always talked about himself in the third person.

I stripped off my shirt and scrubbed as hard as I could bear, the chill water quickly stealing the feeling from my fingertips. I rushed to get all of the blood out of my hair and off my skin. Rather than worry about the clothes for the time being, I stripped to my skin and held out a hand to the jester, who didn't look at me as he passed me the extra clothes. I thought at first he was trying to give me privacy, but from the way his eyes scanned back and forth I realized that he was just still keeping watch. I quickly dressed myself and bundled up the soiled outfit under one arm. As I started to turn to go back into the house, Cicero held up one gloved hand and gestured me back.

The alley was covered in a rime of ice, and my short-cropped hair was already stiff from washing it in the cold. I shivered and chattered while a pair of Windhelm guards walked right past the mouth of the alley, complaining about the weather as they patrolled. Cicero was pressed up against the wall ahead of me, nearly invisible in the shadows, his dagger drawn and held behind him to prevent the metal from gleaming in the torchlight. Once they were gone, Cicero sheathed his knife and turned to me again, a jaunty and roguish smile on his face.

"Welcome to the family," he chirped. His face suddenly seemed to cross over into shadow, and his cheery smile became vicious and threatening. His voice turned gravelly as he said, "If your first kill was any indication, I look forward to great things from you."

At that, my stomach suddenly turned over and I had to face away from the jester as I suddenly threw up all over the alley wall. When I finished, Cicero was watching me with something like distaste. I couldn't really blame him; I had just shown him the entire contents of my stomach, which didn't tend to lend itself to good impressions. As I straightened myself up and went to check my mouth for stray matter, he handed me a hand towel. I looked at him quizzically, and he pantomimed using a napkin to dab at the corners of his mouth.

"Cicero knows that many young people feel sick after a first kill," he said as I wiped at my face. "The excitement, you know. It will get easier."

"Will it really?" I asked. Even with my raw hatred of Rolff at work, it had been hard to convince myself to stab another human being, especially one that screamed and cursed at me.

"Oh, yes," he said, nodding. "But never any less exciting!" Cicero let out a mad cackle as he danced his way toward the door to my house. As I trailed along behind him, my empty stomach gurgling and my body shivering from the cold, I suddenly felt unaccountably emotional. I had done the right thing in killing Rolff; so why was I on the verge of tears?

Once I was back inside, I found Hecate waiting for me, changed into traveling clothes more like what I thought she should have been wearing the first time. Nazir and the Khajit—a female, I now saw—had already wrapped up Rolff's body in a tarp and were pulling up a waterproof oilcloth from the floor where he had been sitting. I hadn't even been able to tell I was standing on it before; it was very clever. Hecate walked over to Cicero and squeezed his hand affectionately before sitting down in the chair next to the fire. Someone had gotten it going while I was outside, and now it was crackling merrily.

I wandered over to Hecate, feeling more unbalanced than I had for months. She held out her arms to me, and at long last she gave me the hug I had been dreaming of for nearly a year. As she pulled me into her warm, strong embrace, I finally realized that my emotion wasn't a negative one. I was cold and tired and sore—but I was also happy. I was sad that Shahvee was gone, but I was happy that her killer had found justice. And I was happy for myself.

When Hecate finally whispered the words I had been waiting to hear from her, it pushed me over the edge and I started weeping openly. "Welcome to the Dark Brotherhood, Aventus Aretino," she said. I cried for almost an hour, pouring out my heart on her shoulder. Sweeter words had never been spoken to me before.

After I finished, I put away my few possessions, locked up the house, and never looked back. It was time to begin my new life. With my new family.

* * *

…_to be continued…_


	8. Chapter 8: Sanctuary

**Chapter 8: Sanctuary**

"Hold still," Babette murmured as she brought the sharp blades close to my throat. I gulped deeply, nervous about her having them so close to my skin.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" I asked, hoping my voice sounded steadier to her than it did to me.

"Don't be stupid," she snapped impatiently. "I've done this hundreds… I mean, dozens of times." I finally smiled a little at Babette's near-exaggeration. She was always doing that sort of thing—inflating numbers to sound like she had been in the Brotherhood a lot longer than me even though she looked about the same age. After the first time I called her out on it, she had started to get mad and then just giggled and called me silly.

I was so busy musing over how clever I was that I barely noticed the blades whisper together.

"See," she said, leaning close. "All done. You didn't need to be such a baby about it, Aventus."

"I wasn't being a baby," I said as I pulled the towel off my shoulders and leaned toward the nearby mirror to look at my new haircut. "The last time you cut my hair, you nicked my neck and I bled all over the place."

"Hmmm…." Babette mused. "I already apologized for that. Besides, it was your own fault for moving so much."

I looked myself over in the mirror. With my new haircut, so I could look nice for New Life Day, I looked practically respectable. I had come a long way from the long-haired and starving orphan I had been at Honorhall, and almost as far from the ragged-haired and wild street child I had turned into in Windhelm. I couldn't deny that Babette had done a good job; with my cheeks filled out after nearly three months of good meals and my hair cut at a decent length, I looked like what I had finally become—someone with a family to take care of him.

It hadn't been an easy transition, though…

* * *

After finishing my crying fit, we left that very night. Hecate bundled me up warmly and put me on her horse, a terrifying black beast with glowing red eyes she called Shadowmere. I was too numb to be afraid and the creature barely acknowledged my presence as she lifted me onto its broad back. Once she mounted up herself, she told me to hold on tight—and we rode like the wind.

The cold night air whipped past us faster than I had ever moved before, and I was struck by a sense of terrible, amazing freedom. Once that passed, I was mostly worried about the cold; even bundled up tightly, the Frostfall winds were like knives on my cheeks, pulling freezing tears from my eyes as we flew across Skyrim. We rode through the night and into the next morning, stopping only briefly to eat a bite and let me grab a short nap.

I had barely closed my eyes when Hecate shook me awake again and put me back on the horse. I had never ridden a horse before, let alone so quickly, so by the time we got to our destination I was exhausted and sore. It was evening again before we reached our destination: a secluded grove in the northern reaches somewhere. I could see the lights of a town in the distance, but the forest was quiet and deep. We dismounted and walked the horses through the damp underbrush until we finally arrived at a sunken rock pit surrounded on three sides by low, stony bluffs.

At first I thought it was a trick of the light or my imagination, but after Nazir lit a torch I could see that I had been right. At the bottom of the gully, flush into the rocks, was a door—a black door. Hecate walked boldly to the door ahead of the rest of us while the Khajit, whose name I still had not heard, took the horses away to some secluded place. As we approached it, I found my blood running cold and my pulse pounding in my ears. It sounded wrong somehow, though; the low thrum sounded like someone else's heartbeat instead of my own.

I nearly screamed when a dead, hollow voice came out of the door, asking "What is life's greatest illusion?"

"Innocence, my brother," she replied.

"Welcome… home…" it rasped before sliding open to reveal a stone stair leading into the earth. I followed my new brothers and sisters into the caverns below. Nazir lit torches and lanterns as he followed, finally illuminating an enormous chamber with stairways climbing up to an overlooking balcony. The walls were decorated with red tapestries emblazoned with the black hand of the Dark Brotherhood, and the chamber was a combination of natural stone and fitted blocks, all held up by mighty wooden beams.

I stared around in open awe. The place was spacious and impressive. A single long table took up much of the middle of the main room, with smaller tables and chairs pushed into the corners. It looked like a place built to be home to dozens; I felt as though the five of us were swallowed up by the vastness of the cavern. I turned in a slow circle, drinking it all in.

"Close your mouth or you'll start attracting flies," Nazir said as he passed me by. I closed my mouth with a snap, but when I looked at him, he winked at me before continuing on.

"We did it!" Cicero shouted happily, his voice echoing off the walls. "We did it!" He grabbed Hecate around the waist and spun her in a circle, stomping his feet rhythmically. The two of them laughed together and danced to music only they could hear, looking deeply into each other's eyes. The whole thing was ridiculous and I couldn't help but laughing aloud.

"Welcome to Sanctuary, little one," the Khajit woman said to me in her rasping voice as she took off her cloak and tossed it onto a pile of similar garb. I finally got my first good look at her; she was a calico-patterned creature with soft-looking, short fur and green eyes. "Get used to the two of them acting like fools all the time. This one," she rumbled, indicating herself with a paw, "is above such things."

"Really, Meena?" asked Nazir. He had come back into the common room carrying an armload of glass bottles, putting them down carefully on the long table. "Then I suppose you're not interested in any of the celebration wine I brought out? I don't seem to recall you being so dour when we welcomed you." Even before he finished the sentence, Meena was grabbing a cup and filling it. She sniffed disdainfully as she walked away. Nazir only chuckled.

"That one's gonna be a handful," he said, watching her tail swish as she walked away.

"Is Meena new too?" I asked. He nodded at me. "Are there any others I haven't met?"

"Just one," he said, and his face looked sad. "She'll be down in a little while, probably." I did a quick count in my head; while my math wasn't great, I was pretty sure I was adding up right this time.

"Are there only six people in Sanctuary?"

"There used to be more of us," Nazir replied, taking a swig from a cup of wine that I hadn't seen him pour for himself. "A long time ago, the Dark Brotherhood was powerful and feared throughout Tamriel. When I was a young man, I remember people speaking of the Brotherhood only in hushed whispers. Then something happened…" He drank deeply again, his face turned down from old sorrows. "Back in Cyrodiil, the heart of the Brotherhood's power, the Empire decided to purge us. We were hunted down, driven out, pushed away. Finally, only one sanctuary remained in all of Tamriel—the one in Falkreath, far south of here."

"Where are we anyway?" I asked, glancing around. "I don't really know that much of Skyrim outside of Windhelm and Riften, so I'm not sure what hold we're near."

"Dawnstar," Nazir said simply. "The Falkreath Sanctuary was betrayed too. We few survivors came north to start over. Right now, it's not just six of us in Dawnstar Sanctuary, or six of us in Skyrim." He drained his cup and put it down on the table with a thump that sounded a bit too firm. "Aventus, there are only six of us left in all of Tamriel." I gaped at the news. I had believed the Dark Brotherhood to be a much bigger, more powerful organization—not that it would have changed my mind about joining. I was just stunned at the idea of how far the mighty assassins had fallen. No wonder they lived in a cave; I mused that the other sanctuaries must have been even more impressive than this one.

Nazir stood up, patting me on the shoulder briefly, and went over to where Meena was sitting. He took the bottle with him as he went; I thought it was a kind gesture for him to reach out to a new member like that. I wasn't interested in drinking, of course… Well, maybe a little. But I figured that I was probably still too young to imbibe alcohol, even if I was old enough to cut throats. The adults were having such a good time that I was loathe to interrupt them, even though I was getting hungry and a little bored.

"Good evening, everyone," came a pleasant, sweet voice. I glanced over at the staircase to see a dark-haired Breton girl walking down from the upper level. She looked like she was my age, or maybe a year or two older. Nazir hadn't mentioned that our last member was another kid! "Did you kill well?"

"Aventus did," Hecate said, breaking free of Cicero long enough to gesture toward me. I felt my face turn red with embarrassment and pride. I smiled up at the Breton girl, who seemed shocked to see another child in the sanctuary. "Aventus, this is Babette. She's a-"

"Alchemist!" Babette interrupted excitedly. "I'm an alchemist!"

Hecate frowned at being interrupted, but I was a little impressed. Clearly, the Brotherhood would let little kids join if they were exceptional—and I suddenly realized that must apply to me too, with pleasant surprise—but to be a skilled professional at something like alchemy was quite the accomplishment even for an adult. Babette had to be really smart to be an alchemist at only a year or two older than me, and she was clearly enthusiastic about her role in the Brotherhood.

"That's right," Hecate agreed, though her face was slightly pinched as she said it. Being interrupted must have really annoyed her. "Babette knows about potions and poisons, so if you need either, I'm sure she'll help if you ask nicely."

"Oh, wow," I said with a genuine smile. She skipped down the stair and stuck out her hand in an awkward way. I shook it, though I thought she was trying a little too hard to be grown up. "I thought I would be the only kid here. I'm really glad to meet you." I leaned in to whisper to her, "The adults were getting kind of boring."

"I know how it is," she said, smiling shyly in return. She was very pale, which made her dark hair contrast sharply with her skin. I shivered a little myself, wondering if there were fireplaces in the sanctuary or if we would have to make do with bundling up.

"Do you wanna play?" I asked her impulsively. She seemed like she was trying so hard to be formal and grown up with the adults around; maybe she would relax a little if I acted more like a kid. I wanted desperately to be liked by all of my new brothers and sisters, but I felt that Babette was someone I could relate to a little better since we were so close in age.

"Sure," she said. She visibly relaxed at the offer. Maybe I was finally getting better with people. "I can show you some neat stuff about this place."

As we raced through the halls and rooms of Sanctuary, I could only feel like I had finally come home.

* * *

The morning after my arrival at Sanctuary was a big breakfast and spending time with my new family. Hecate looked like she was maybe coming down with something; a ride cross-country in the middle of Frostfall isn't good for anyone, and I could only imagine how much effort it took to protect me from the elements while she was riding. I could only admire her willingness to sacrifice for her family. I quickly ate my breakfast, and wound up getting seconds when Hecate pushed her plate away.

"Where's Babette?" I asked. Looking around the room, I could see everyone but Babette and Cicero situated at the main table in the central chamber. Nazir was walking back and forth from the nearby cooking fire to bring food to people as they straggled in. Meena had her head down on the table, so maybe she was coming down with the same thing as Hecate.

"Swallow your food before talking," Hecate chastised gently, one hand pressing a cool cloth onto her forehead. "Babette is probably sleeping. She tends to sleep during the day."

"Can I do that?" I asked, my eyes widening at the possibilities.

"Eventually," she replied agreeably enough. "Right now I want you to start training. You're going to learn how to fight and to defend yourself… and a number of other things. Once you've got the basics, I'll send you on missions with someone else as backup and then you can start making your own schedule. In time, you can decide what contracts you want and how to execute them with your own unique style."

"This is so much better than Honorhall!" I exclaimed, unable to keep my excitement to myself.

"Good morning, good morning!" came a cheery voice from behind me. Looking back, I could see the motley-clad form of Cicero, who dropped into a seat next to Hecate. I was beginning to get the impression that Hecate and Cicero were more than just partners when she crammed a spoonful of oatmeal into his mouth to shut him up. When he retorted by smearing oatmeal onto her face and licking it off while she laughed, my impression crystallized into certainty. I still knew so little about my new family, so I figured it was time to start asking questions.

"Are you guys married?" I blurted out. When Hecate choked on her food and her eyes bulged out, I cursed my lack of subtlety.

"No!" she sputtered, then wiped her mouth to get rid of the oatmeal on her chin. I was a little disappointed; at the same time, I felt oddly comforted to know that my assassin wasn't married.

"So… you're not my new mom and dad?"

"Oh, gods, no!" she exclaimed. Now, I was really disappointed. Was being my mom such a burden that she would push it aside so fast?

"I thought you were adopting me," I pointed out, trying to hide the disappointment in my voice. She laid a gentle hand on my shoulder and smiled again.

We are… sort of. You've been adopted into the Brotherhood, not by any one person in it. I'm your new sister, and Cicero is your new brother," she said, laying her other hand on the fool's knee.

"What about parents?" I asked.

"Well," Hecate said, taking a quick glance at Cicero, "the Night Mother is your mother now too." She paused, seeming to come to a decision. "Cicero, why don't you introduce Aventus properly to Mother?" I could hear the importance of the word when she said it.

"Yes!" the fool shouted, jumping to his feet and dancing a short jig. "Mother should meet her newest son." He leaned over to me and grabbed my hand. "She's quite nice, you know… even if she's dead." His smile was wide and wickedly cheerful as he pulled me from my seat. I know that some people might have been nervous to be taken by a mad jester into the presence of a supernatural corpse, but I was oddly indifferent at the idea. After all, it wouldn't be the first corpse I had called "mother."

Cicero led me through the halls of Sanctuary, and for a moment I could almost feel like I was holding hands with my father, walking to temple on a feast day. The illusion couldn't last, though; all too quickly we had ascended the flight of stairs to the chamber which held the Night Mother's coffin. The enormous steel sarcophagus stood on a raised platform surrounded by dozens of lit candles and bouquets of fresh flowers, flanked on either side by a tapestry bearing the black hand of the Dark Brotherhood. The lid of the coffin bore the relief of a stern woman's face above a pair of skeletal hands clasped on her breast.

"Before you meet Mother," Cicero chirped, "you must keep in mind the first tenet. Always show respect." He turned to look at me, and his face had completely transformed. No more was he the cheery-eyed fool who had smeared oatmeal on Hecate's face at breakfast. Now it was the stern, cheerless face of a priest; I had seen that same expression on the faces of the priests of Talos who sometimes railed against the empire in the streets of Windhelm. It was the face of a man who would fearlessly die for his god—or soullessly kill for her.

I nodded my understanding, and Cicero walked forward to unlatch the clasp that held the coffin shut. As the steel doors swung open, their contents in shadow, I had a moment of vertigo, like I was looking into the darkness that had haunted my dreams all the last year. Then the light reached the interior and I was looking at the desiccated husk of what might have once been a woman.

Much of the Night Mother's corpse was wrapped in cloth and secured into the coffin by numerous ropes. Her skin was like leather, dark and aged. Her face was distorted by death and the time that had passed since, but her hollow eye sockets felt somehow aware. I was struck by a sensation of presence—that I was under a judging gaze rather than standing in front of a mere object. I didn't realize that I was reaching toward her until Cicero's hand closed painfully on my wrist.

"No, no, no," Cicero clucked, his fingers grasping the tender bones tightly enough to make me gasp. "Only the Keeper can touch Mother, and only for her necessities. The boy mustn't touch." I nodded, trying to keep tears from forming in my eyes. Apparently satisfied, the Keeper released his hold on me. I gingerly rubbed my wounded wrist and winced at the sensation. Gods, how could a man who looked so thin have such a strong grip?

Once my wrist stopped stinging, I turned back to look at the Night Mother. The sight of her empty eyes reminded me of my own mother's skull as I had lifted it out of her niche in the Hall of the Dead. The Night Mother's body was so much better preserved than my own mother's had been. Was it because the Night Mother had a big family to take care of her instead of just a single, lonely child?

As I stared at that corpse I was reminded of how the dead had once been disturbing to me. They had always seemed like a reminder of how unfair life was—like every dead body was a marker saying, "No matter how good or bad this person was, they all end up the same way." Looking at the Night Mother, I now knew that wasn't true. Not every corpse was an empty shell; not everyone's quality of death was the same. The Night Mother was a promise that inequities could be resolved, that the scales could be balanced—even from beyond the grave. Struck by a sudden burst of overwhelming emotion, I suddenly dropped to my knees in front of the open coffin.

"Thank you, Night Mother," I said, my voice hoarse and thick. "Thank you for sending one of your children to me when I called. Thank you for taking me in when no one else could. Thank you for saving me." Cicero's strong, gloved hand fell onto my shoulder as lightly as a feather. It squeezed once, reassuringly. I looked up into his smiling face; he was almost beatific in the glow of the candles.

"The boy speaks from the heart," he murmured. "Our Mother can be terrible—but she can also be kind. Cicero knew that the boy would fit in fine around here." He pulled me to my feet and brushed my shoulders as though cleaning off dust only he could see. "Now the boy must go. It is time."

"Time for what?" I asked. The jester smiled his predatory smile.

"Time to see if the boy can be taught more than just proper manners." I shuddered at his tone, and with one last look at the Night Mother—did her body move, ever so slightly?—I followed him to begin the first day of my training.

* * *

After escaping from Honorhall Orphanage, spending a season on the roads of Skyrim, living on the streets of Windhelm, and becoming a starving recluse for the better part of a year, I was convinced that nothing could ever hurt me again. One day of training with the Dark Brotherhood made me realize how naïve I had been.

"Again!" Nazir barked for what seemed like the hundredth time. I raised my arms into a warding stance, holding the practice baton with a death grip as Cicero stepped toward me. Just like the previous ninety-nine times, he swept in with a quarter-speed stroke from his own baton. Mine was about the length of a short sword while his was a wooden dowel about as long as a dagger, but his greater natural reach made up the difference—and then some. I easily parried the slow strike, moving my baton in the defensive pattern Nazir had shown me. Cicero gradually sped up, and within moments I was sweating and straining to block even a third of his strikes. Whenever I missed one, he would tap me lightly on the arm or in the ribs and morbidly laugh.

"Dead!" he cried each time. "The boy is dead again! And again!"

After each round, Nazir would give me a drink of water and then switch out Cicero for Meena. The Khajit was far less gentle than the jester, and I had several narrow cuts on my arms and chest from where her claws broke the skin. When I complained about the claws, she would only reply that she was the one being treated unfairly because I had a weapon and she didn't. During one break I voiced my protest to Nazir but he was no more sympathetic.

"Aventus," he scolded, "when you leave this Sanctuary on mission, the people you meet will be far less kind than anyone you're sparring with now. Your enemies will not care about words like 'fair,' so you must be prepared to fight under the worst conditions possible." He drank a ladle of water before offering me one. "Of course, the best choice is to make the fight as unfair as possible in your favor, which is why you're also going to be training in stealth as well as weapons."

The first day was mostly just a test of my speed and strength, neither of which were anywhere close to that of my trainers. I felt slow and weak and clumsy compared to Cicero and Meena. Nazir tried to encourage me, reminding me that I had never had any sort of training before, and that both of my tutors were experienced assassins, but I grew increasingly frustrated. As the day dragged on, it seemed like I was getting slower and weaker while my teachers were just as fresh and unfazed as ever.

By the time I collapsed into bed that night, every part of me was sore and aching. The next morning, I found myself waking up after far too little sleep to the sight of Nazir shaking my shoulder. He had woken me an hour before dawn to start again, though at least he was thoughtful enough to bring food when he did it. The day progressed much as the last one had, though it also included some basic instruction in the arts of stealth from Meena.

For the next several days, my schedule largely consisted of getting up before dawn, spending the hours before lunch getting beaten on by Cicero, eating a quick meal, and then spending another four or five hours alternating between being beaten on by Cicero and Meena yelling at me when any part of my body poked out from behind an obstruction. Still, though I was sore and tired and frustrated, I was still happier than I had ever been before. I was finally learning a trade—how to kill people without getting killed first.

I missed getting to play with Babette, like I had my first night in Sanctuary, but I was far too tired for anything of the sort—even if I had seen her for more than a few minutes that first week. Generally, I would come to dinner and immediately wander off to collapse into bed. Since Babette was awake at night and I trained during the day, I might see her just long enough to exchange a few pleasant words before stumbling away to find slumber. She would always have something encouraging to say about my training before waving goodnight to me, and once she even helped me find my way back to my bed when I was too sore to walk straight. We were becoming pretty good friends despite our limited amount of interaction, and I was grateful to finally have a real friend.

The end of the first week saw my first major stumble. Until then, I think that I had been a competent enough student; Nazir praised my willingness to learn and never failed to remind me that I was still new to all this when I couldn't keep up. Still, I was used to picking up new skills quickly by observation and by trial and error, so it frustrated me that my body couldn't keep up with the maneuvers that my mind now grasped. Simply put, I wasn't in good enough shape to do the things I knew I was capable of; two years of hard living and scraping by had left me with less muscle than most boys my age, and I hadn't yet hit my growth spurt so I was still smallish.

After a week of training, Nazir deemed me confident enough with my defense work that we could graduate to real weapons. The rack of knives and swords intimidated me more than a little. I had only held a real blade once before—and I still shivered whenever I thought of how that had ended. Though Rolff had deserved death and worse for his crimes, and though I still didn't doubt the righteousness of what I had done, part of me still flinched away from remembering his death. I occasionally had nightmares of being pursued through the streets of Windhelm by gangs of vicious, dog-faced children, only to round a corner and run right into Rolff's waiting arms…

I shivered from the thought and gingerly took a long-bladed knife from the rack. Cicero joined me in the sparring circle; both of us were stripped to the waist but he was still wearing his leather gloves… and, oddly enough, his jester's cap. Did he sleep in the damned thing? We nodded respectfully to one another and began our slow dance of death. We went through the patterns several times, Cicero occasionally tapping me with the flat of his blade to show the holes in my defenses. He could have easily cut me any number of times, but his control of the blade was remarkable.

As we were working through the knife patterns for the fourth time in a row—my endurance had increased considerably in only a week of training, if not my strength or speed—Meena came bounding into the training room. She often showed up later than we did, sometimes not even appearing for breakfast. I managed to catch a look at her as she snuck up behind the intensely-focused Keeper, and I wondered what she was doing. Her face was pinched up impishly as she ducked into Cicero's blind spot and reached out to dig her fingers into his ribs.

"Coochie coochie coo!" she screamed as she tickled the Keeper's sides relentlessly. Cicero burst out laughing and dropped his knife, but I was already in the middle of a strike and couldn't pull my arm back quickly enough. The blade bit into Cicero's side just above his hip and below Meena's roaming hands, cutting a red line onto his flank. It might have been worse, except that Cicero managed to twist at the last second to minimize the impact of the blade.

With a burst of sudden speed and seriousness, he pivoted on one heel. He pushed Meena away from the oncoming blade with one hand and seized my shoulder with the other. Once again, his strength was shocking, and the way he turned his hand made my whole arm go numb. I stumbled back from the Keeper with my face twisted up in horror and shock. Cicero pressed one hand against the wound with a critical look on his face.

"Oh gods," I blurted out. "I'm so sorry!"

"The boy should be sorry," Cicero snarled. "With the kind of opening Meena gave you, poor Cicero should have had six inches of steel in his gut instead of a pretty red ribbon on his side!" Nazir came rushing past me to look at the wound on Cicero's side.

"By Sithis," he exclaimed. "Hecate's going to have kittens when she sees this."

"This one is offended by the Speaker's turn of the phrase," Meena groused from her position on the far side of the room where Cicero had pushed her. She was dusting off her thighs and swishing her tail, and judging from the state of chairs where she was standing, her landing must not have been a graceful one.

My eyes seized on the fallen dagger. As I cradled my hurt shoulder with my good hand, all I could think was that I had hurt my family. I stared at the ruby droplets on the blade, slowly collecting together and pooling on the stone. I suddenly flashed to the knife I had killed Rolff with, how the blood had looked the same, only more of it, so much more…

And then I was on my feet and running. I don't know where I was going, if I even intended to go anywhere other than "away," but when I came to my senses I was in one of the emptier corners of Sanctuary, holding onto the sides of a small table with both hands and shivering. My breath came in ragged gasps as I tried desperately to get myself under control.

"Aventus…?" I heard Babette's sleepy voice say behind me. "Is everything all right?" I turned to look at her and suddenly realized that wherever I was standing must be close to her room. She was standing in the hallway, wearing a nightgown and rubbing at her eyes sleepily. For just a moment they looked red, but by the time I had blinked the sweat out of my eyes they looked normal. I must have been still seeing things from my panic attack.

"I cut Cicero," I said in a small voice, leaning back against the table. The wood bit painfully into my bare back as I ran a hand over my face. "It was an accident." She walked over to me and laid her hand over my free one. She leaned her head on my bare shoulder, her long hair brushing over my arm.

"That's not what you're upset about, though," she said. I was chilled by how perceptive she was and shook my head as the words gummed together in my throat. "It's all right, Aventus. Everyone feels… what you're feeling about their first kill."

"I don't regret killing him, if that's what you're saying," I returned angrily. She laughed gently and patted my hand again.

"It's not guilt you're feeling, silly," she replied, "not really. You just have a lifetime of people telling you that hurting others is wrong, so you think you should feel guilty. It's just vestigial." I didn't know the word, but I understood the point. Babette was saying that my sickness over killing Rolff was just a bad reaction, like when I was sick the first time I drank mead. My mom had given me some before she died and laughed when I complained about the taste. When I asked her why anyone would drink it willingly, she could only say that it was something that grew on you.

I supposed that killing was the same way.

"I guess," I said, suddenly very aware that I was shirtless in front of Babette. She didn't seem to care, so I tried my best to not be embarrassed by it either. "I just don't like blood very much."

"That's a shame," she murmured. At my confused look, she straightened up and clarified, "It's just that we see a lot of it in this profession." She bit her lip in thought and turned to look at me. "How do you feel about maces?"

"I was a lot more comfortable when we were using training sticks…" I said, wondering where this was going.

"That can be your personal style then," she said brightly. "Just because Cicero and Meena both prefer cutting things to ribbons is no reason you can't use blunt weapons. The principles are pretty much the same, though maces take a lot more strength to use effectively." I stared at her as she went through her points, and she smiled awkwardly.

"You're lecturing," I teased, reaching out to tap her nose gently. An annoyed look crossed her face for a moment before she pulled up her hand to cover her mouth while giggling.

"I do that sometimes," she admitted. "Come on. You should get back and apologize to Nazir for running out on your training." She reached up and ran her fingers along my jaw and behind my ear. My skin tingled slightly at how cold her fingers were. "We should see about getting you a haircut before someone mistakes you for a girl." She smiled to show she was teasing, and I grinned back broadly. She squeezed my hand one last time for reassurance, and then skipped lightly back to her room.

By the time I got back to the training room, Cicero's wound had been cleaned and bandaged—and I was feeling a world better. Nazir looked at me sternly as I walked back in, but I immediately apologized and all was forgiven.

"You're going to have to get used to bloodletting," was all he would add to the matter before we got back to training—with sticks again.

In my heart, I knew he was right. Still, Babette's suggestion stuck with me. It wasn't the killing that I was afraid of, honestly; even when I had been killing rabbits for food, I had never feared taking their little lives. Thinking back, it had always been skinning and draining them that had been the problem. Using maces and hammers would neatly avoid that little problem—and my targets would be just as dead.

When we started training with real weapons again, a few days later, Nazir was happy to let me try out the Brotherhood's selection of bludgeons. The satisfying crunch of the training dummy's neck giving way from a solid blow made Nazir wince with mock sympathy and then nod approvingly.

"I think we were wasting you on blades," he admitted. "We'll go forward with a focus on maces for the time being. But you still need to keep up with the knife training. You never know when you'll need a backup weapon or have to fight with whatever you have on hand." I beamed at his approval.

From then on, I doubled my efforts. I might have a long way to go before I was ready to start taking contracts, but I was determined that I would be. I would make my new family proud. I would kill well, and often.

* * *

…_to be continued…_


	9. Chapter 9: New Life

**Chapter 9: New Life**

I ran through the frigid forest, drizzle whipping into my face as my boots splashed through mud and tangling vines. My pulse pounded as my legs pumped, trying to combine speed with accuracy so I didn't slip in the puddles or trip on anything. I was sweating under my Dark Brotherhood cowl despite the cold, and my chest ached with each heaving breath as I tried to outrace my own death.

I didn't dare look back; Nazir had said that when trying to outrun death, looking back was a fine way to get killed. He had laughed then and said that looking ahead didn't guarantee survival, but looking back was certain doom. I remembered how bitter his laugh was when he said it. Had he been speaking from personal experience?

A branch in the face reminded me to focus my mind on what I was doing, and the sudden sound of rough inhalation behind me gave me just enough warning to duck to one side and put my back to a tree for a second. I heard the wet, spattering impact of acidic poison on the tree and I thanked the Night Mother for the training I had been given over the last few months. I would have already been dead a dozen times over if it weren't for the Dark Brotherhood's training regimen, but even so it was taking every ounce of my new speed and stamina to keep ahead of my would-be killer. Pretty soon, if I couldn't find some place to hide, I was going to die.

As I took off again, a nightmare race through the marshy forests outside Dawnstar, I wondered how in the Void it could have all gotten so out of control. All I had been trying to do was find a pet for a friend, and now I was running for my life from a monster three times my size with double my limbs. I had been running from it for what felt like forever, and the cold and exertion were wearing me down while the noise behind me indicated that it was far from deciding the chase was over. The beast's poison spittle made climbing a tree useless, and I was nowhere near enough to Sanctuary to get there before the creature overtook me. I didn't relish the idea of being paralyzed by venom and having my organs slowly drained out.

Against my will, my mind wandered again, back to New Life Day, and how it all started…

* * *

Ever since Babette told me about New Life Day, I had been fascinated. My mother and I had never celebrated holidays because of our poverty, not even my birthday, so she had to sit down and explain the whole thing to me. I was so excited about the idea of a day that families got together to celebrate their lives and exchange gifts that I was able to completely overlook her occasional sniffs at my ignorance.

She could be like that sometimes, but I knew she didn't really mean anything by it. I could only imagine how tough it had been for her to join the Brotherhood so young and work so hard to become an alchemist at her age. It was tough enough for me to master the basics of offense, defense, and stealth, let alone a professional skill like alchemy. I think it made her work harder to be accepted by the adults, and even to sometimes make up stories to try and impress me. Still, Babette had become my best friend in only a couple of months in Sanctuary, and it was her I usually turned to when I needed advice about life in the Brotherhood.

Babette was able to explain that the New Life Festival was the turning of the new year, a day when contracts were renewed, vows were made, and older people meditated on their lives and what they wanted to do in the year to come. The part that interested me more was the idea of gift-giving. I was excited about the idea of getting a gift, but the fact that I finally had people I could give gifts to was even better. And I knew exactly who I wanted my first-ever present given to go to.

"I don't know what to get for Hecate," I complained to Babette after she was done explaining.

"Well," she responded, "the rest of us are pooling our money to get her something very nice. You could contribute to that if you wanted." It wasn't the personal gift I was hoping to give, but I supposed that if I got something small for her on my own, it wouldn't be very impressive compared to the others' gift.

"Do I even have money?" I wondered aloud. "I mean, do I have like… a salary or something?" Babette's raucous laughter made my face burn with embarrassment. Why did I always feel like a dumb kid around her? It wasn't like she was that much older than me. "Well then, would you loan me some money so I can chip in? I'll pay you back after my first contract." Babette was already shaking her head before I even finished my request.

"I like you, Aventus," she started apologetically, "but it's my policy to never loan money to a brother or sister. It causes too many hard feelings. Worse than that, there's every chance that someone might die on mission and be unable to repay me. Poor old Festus Krex died owing me money." I stared at her, a little shaken by her worry over money when casually discussing the death of a member of her old family at Falkreath. I pushed it down; I decided that it was just her way of coping with what had happened then, the same way that my detachment and isolation had been a way of coping with my mother's death and my imprisonment at Honorhall.

"It's hard to think about what happened to the Brotherhood right before I joined," I said, trying to get Babette to open up about the ordeal. Hecate had sat down with me one day and explained about the betrayal of the Dark Brotherhood, about the destruction of the previous Sanctuary. She hadn't given me a lot of details, but I knew that it had been bad. "All those brothers and sisters I'll never get to meet…"

"They were my family for a long time," Babette admitted, looking away from me. "I do miss them… Especially Gabriella and Lis."

"Who's Lis?" I asked. Hecate had mentioned other brothers and sister to me, but not anyone named Lis.

"Lis was my pet," Babette said, her eyes unfocused and her voice wistful. I supposed that was why Hecate hadn't mentioned her then; our Listener didn't seem like the sort of person to get sentimental over animals. "She was a frostbite spider I raised from an egg." I sighed to myself; there she went, making up stories again.

"Sure thing, Babette," I said, perhaps a little sharply. She wrinkled up her nose and stomped off. I felt bad about it, but I salved my conscience by saying that she shouldn't be such a big liar. After a moment, I picked myself up and went to find Cicero.

A quick search through Sanctuary found the jester in one of the chambers off from the shrine of the Night Mother. He was curled up on the floor, knees drawn up and a slate balanced on them while he occasionally marked on it. He always seemed to be busy whenever we weren't training, so I did my best not to bother him normally. Today was unusual, though; I marched right up to him and cleared my throat.

"Yes?" he asked without looking up from his scribbles.

"Um… I have a favor to ask." I hoped that my voice sounded more confident to him than it did to me. The truth was that I thought Cicero was amazing—strong, fast, a good fighter, and obviously Hecate loved him—but he also scared me a little. Sometimes he talked to people who weren't there or sang morbid little songs or just stared into space for hours on end. I asked Hecate about it once, but all she would say was that life had been hard to Cicero. He looked up at me and nodded for me to go ahead; it was more than I had really expected.

"Well, New Life Day is coming up… I've never celebrated it before, and I was hoping to get something for Hecate." He continued looking at me blankly. "I don't have any money, so I was hoping that… youmightloanmesome."

"The boy wants to borrow money?" he asked, his eyes amused now. "I could just say that the present the others are getting Hecate is from you as well…"

"No!" I interrupted. He tilted his head and looked at me curiously. His jester's cap stayed firmly in place, though. How the hell did he keep that thing on? "I don't just want my name put on it. If I don't contribute—if it doesn't cost me something—then it isn't really from me. Does that make sense?"

"Cicero understands about sacrifice," he nodded in agreement. "Very well, Cicero will happily loan Aventus the value of one-fourth of the gift." I goggled at him. After Babette's prickliness over money I had expected it to be harder to talk him into it.

"Really?" I asked suspiciously. "Wait, a fourth?"

"Hecate has commanded poor Cicero to buy her nothing," he said sadly, a hand over his heart. A wicked smile passed over his face and he laid a finger alongside his nose while winking. "But clever Cicero has his ways of obeying while still doing something nice."

"Well…" I dithered. "Are you sure?"

"Of course!" he exclaimed, standing up suddenly enough to send his slate flying across the room. "I feel it's important for siblings to share what they have with one another when the need arises."

"Thank you!" I said, throwing my arms around Cicero's waist. He awkwardly patted my shoulder before gently pushing me away. I continued more gravely, "I'll pay you back out of my first contract!"

"I'll consider it a promise," he said primly. Then he leaned down so that we were face-to-face. His eyes seemed to be cast into shadows. "Just remember the Tenets, boy. You've given me your word, so if you fail to repay… that would be like stealing." He smiled madly and cartwheeled away in a blur before I could so much as respond.

Dealing with Cicero was always terrifying.

* * *

A near-miss from another gob of poison passed close enough to my cheek that a stray droplet hit me just below the ear. The burning sensation was quickly replaced by a cold numbness that made part of my face go slack. No wonder they called them "frostbite spiders." I cursed under my breath in a way that would have made Babette scold me if she could hear it and poured on the speed, burning up what was left of my stamina.

Up ahead I could see a tumble of fallen rocks. If there was space enough for me to crawl deep into the rocks, the spider wouldn't be able to reach me. I had to chance it. My feet slipped in the rain and mud, and I struggled to keep my balance. After staggered for a half-dozen steps I went down in the muck and instinctively rolled to one side, just in time to avoid the monster's leap from putting it down right on top of me. I continued my roll to the side as it danced around on its eight legs looking for me, coming up to my knees with the aid of a fallen log. I shoulder rolled over the log and flopped flat behind it.

The giant frostbite spider clearly knew I was still present, but missing me with its leap had put me out of its sight for a second—long enough for it to lose track of a much-smaller opponent. I laid face-down in the mud, struggling to control my breathing, while it chittered and screeched. When it sounded like it was turned away from me, I pushed myself upright and made a mad dash for the rock cluster. It was only twenty feet, maybe thirty, but it felt like a mile. I could almost imagine the feeling of the beast's fangs sinking into my back, my limbs going numb…

And just as I feared that it was the end of the line, I slammed between the narrow stones and went tumbling down a muddy incline between them. I could hear the spider screeching in frustration and sizzling venom striking stone above and behind me. I gasped for breath and pushed myself as far back into the crack as I could squeeze. The cold stone and pooling water sapped my body heat, making me shiver uncontrollably, but it was better than being eaten by a monstrous spider.

It was so dark that I couldn't see anything; even the dim light outside the tiny cave was drowned by the bulk of the spider's body blocking up the entrance. Divines, what if I had misjudged how big its body was? What if it could squeeze into the hole, pulling itself in after me? I would be trapped, in the dark, waiting for the frostbite spider to sink its fangs into my thigh…

I slapped myself sharply across the face to cut off that train of thought and make myself focus on the present. Things were bad, but there was no sense worrying about things I couldn't control. If I had miscalculated and the spider could get into my refuge, it would just be the culmination of a long series of terrible miscalculations.

* * *

"Can we open our gifts?" I gushed, bouncing up and down on my chair as Hecate drank from a steaming cup. "Can we? Can we?" Babette joined in with my insistent questioning, smiling broadly as she got into the spirit of pestering our Listener. I was so excited about receiving gifts for the first time ever that I was unable to keep my exuberance to myself. Seeing Babette actually excited for a change just fed into my own sense of elation.

Hecate smiled indulgently over her mug. "We should wait for Meena," she chided. I looked around impatiently for our furriest sibling. She had been sent out on contract to Morthal the week before. Knowing her, if she wasn't out and about when gifts were in the offering, she wasn't back from her contract yet.

"Oh, Listener, please!" Babette whined in her best little-girl voice. She tried to act so mature most of the time that it was hilarious to see her acting like a kid for a change. I turned to Hecate and batted my eyes while joining in on Babette's play. It was hard to focus on our leader for a change, though; Cicero was bringing in plates full of treats and holiday sweets from the kitchen, and I kept glancing at the involuntarily.

"Fine, you vultures!" she finally laughed, spreading her hands wide at the pile of gifts on the main table. "Enjoy!"

The next hour or so was a flurry of fancifully colored wrapping paper ripping into shreds and flying into the air as people tore into their gifts. I was a little disappointed to see that Babette had gotten Hecate an extra gift, but since it was just a bottle of perfume I didn't feel too bad about it. It wasn't like she had gone off and gotten her something impressive. I was so excited to receive my gift, though—my own Dark Brotherhood outfit! Not a full set of armor like I had been hoping, but Hecate explained that since I was still growing, it wouldn't be a good idea for me to get real armor until we knew how tall I was going to wind up.

Cicero got knives and gave knives out. Frightening.

Finally the time came for Hecate to unwrap the gift we had all chipped in on for her. When she pulled out the new bow, her face scrunched up and for a minute I thought she might cry. It was a better reaction than a dumb bottle of perfume, that was for sure. Apparently, she had lost a really valuable bow when Falkreath Sanctuary burned down, and it had taken Nazir weeks of looking to track down a new one that was even better than the old one. I didn't know how much it had cost, but it was worth any amount to see the look of happiness on the face of the woman who had saved me.

"You really should name it," Babette suggested.

I flopped over onto a pile of wrapping paper, completely content. I had run off for a few minutes to change into my new outfit, which fit wonderfully. Now that I was back, I was shockingly tired but I didn't want to put down any of my gifts so I just laid there and dozed while the others talked about boring things. Meena came in at some point; I could make out her purring voice but not the exact words.

I cradled my first ever gifts to my chest as I half-slept. Nazir had gotten me a beautiful wooden ship that looked like the ones I used to admire when I fished down at the Windhelm docks. I didn't even know how he remembered that I liked ships since I could only think of mentioning it to him once in passing. The man had a mind like a steel trap. Cicero had given me a Skyforge steel dagger; I preferred maces, but it was still a gift and I admired the thought.

I was vaguely aware of Babette gently stroking my hair as I lay next to her. Her hand was cold whenever her fingers brushed against my brow, but I didn't mind. I was sometimes surprised at how quickly we had become such good friends. If only she weren't such a big fibber…

I came all the way awake with a start as the wrapping paper flew into the air and I went tumbling across the floor. I was able to feel the cavern shaking around me and I was suddenly afraid that we were under attack, like had happened at Falkreath. As I turned to look for Hecate, I could see that she was standing next to an overturned chair, her face screwed up in rage.

"Time to move, kittens," Meena rumbled at me and Babette as she dragged us from the room. We raced for the door as fast as we could, but not quite fast enough to avoid the sight of Hecate fuming about something.

"**I'M GOING TO KILL SOMEONE!**" Hecate screamed—no, Shouted. I had known for some time that Hecate was really the Dragonborn, some kind of legendary hero responsible for saving the world from dragons. That was just one more reason to admire and look up to her as far as I was concerned. I had missed the whole "dragons attacking the world" thing while I was holed up in my house and wandering the roads of Skyrim, except for maybe seeing a dragon at a long way off—and even that could have just been a big bird or something.

The wrapping paper had just begun to ignite under the power of Hecate's voice, and a glance back showed me that even Cicero seemed to be scared of her. I could hear Hecate continuing to rage behind us, shaking the walls and ceiling of Sanctuary like an earthquake. Until that moment I hadn't realized what it meant to be a master of the Thu'um, the power that men sometimes called Shouting. Hecate had looked like a completely different person, like someone less than human—or much, much more.

"She had best not take it out on the fool," Meena groused once we were at what the Khajiit considered a safe distance. "This one would take that most poorly…" I liked Cicero too, but I thought that Meena might be over-worrying about the whole thing. Even I could tell that Hecate loved Cicero; she would never hurt him. Would she?

"What happened?" I asked in total confusion.

"Weren't you listening?" Babette retorted angrily. I shook my head and she sighed in frustration. "Whiterun fell to Ulfric Stormcloak in a surprise winter attack! The civil war just had a major setback for the Imperials! And someone is pretending to be Hecate! Well, pretending to be the Dragonborn, anyway." I could only goggle dumbly at her. Had I really missed that much while I was napping? While I was still gaping, Babette sniffed loudly, crossed her arms, and turned to storm off back to her room.

Why was she mad at me? She was acting like I was the one who had invaded Whiterun instead of Ulfric Stormcloak. I didn't think I would ever understand girls. Still confused and scared, I went to Nazir's study. I found the Redguard pacing back and forth in front of his desk, scowling occasionally when he stopped to pick up a paper. I knocked gingerly on the door frame.

"What is it, Aventus?" he asked without even looking.

"Happy New Life Day, Nazir," I said lamely. Honestly, I wasn't even sure why I had come to Nazir's office, other than him being the only person in Sanctuary who didn't seem to be angry. Even his scowl looked more worried than anything.

"Happy New Life Day," he said, his face softening. "And thank you for the spices."

"It was Babette's idea," I replied honestly. "I'm glad you liked them, though. I wasn't sure if you would."

"Well, it was very thoughtful of both of you." He sat down next to the desk and I took that as an invitation to join him. "Something on your mind?" he asked with a sardonic smirk. Naturally, only one thing was on anyone's mind right now. I smiled back wanly.

"Is Hecate going to be okay?"

"I think she'll be fine," he said without any hesitation. "Once she figures out what to do about all of this, I mean. We all gave up things to join the Dark Brotherhood, but Hecate gave up her very identity. Finding out that someone else stole her name and legend can't be very pleasant for her."

I nodded, understanding at least a little. "Well, at least she got something new today too," I said, thinking of the bow.

"She did seem to enjoy the gift," Nazir smiled, more genuinely. "It was hard enough to find a Daedric bow at any price, let alone the enormous one we wound up paying. Still, it's some closure to be able to replace some of the things we lost when Falkreath burned." His face turned down again, and I realized that he was thinking of sad times.

"I'm sorry about Falkreath," I offered. "I can't even imagine what it must have been like."

"Pray you never have to learn." Nazir's weathered face looked very old suddenly. "The Dark Brotherhood has always been a family. It's not even the possessions I miss most—it's the people. Old Festus Krex, I think you might have liked him even though he would have pretended to not like you. Gabriella was a sweetheart under all the morbid stuff." He sighed and ran a hand down his pointed beard. "I still miss them all. Even the stupid spider."

I froze.

"Spider?" I asked as innocently as I could manage. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end.

"Babette never told you about her damned pet frostbite spider?" he asked with a deep belly laugh. "She raised that thing from an egg. Treated it like a big dog or something. It was the damnedest thing I'd ever seen. She called it Lis, let it live in Sanctuary."

As Nazir regaled me with stories from the "good old days," I could feel my face begin to burn with shame. I realized that I had been so busy looking down on Babette for "trying too hard" that I had somehow decided that my best friend was a liar. Divines, I had been so blind! I could only think about all of the pain I must have caused her from doubting her, and about how foolish I must have looked when I wouldn't listen. Nazir's talk—which normally would have been fascinating to me—faded into the background as I contemplated how to make up for my private shame and show Babette how much she meant to me.

That's when it hit me. Nazir's melancholy about the old days at Falkreath made me think how much Babette must still miss her old pet spider—so I would go and get her a new one! I couldn't replace Lis, but I could get her a new baby spider hatchling to raise. That would ease my conscience, make Babette happy, and be a delayed New Life Day present, all in one.

What could possibly go wrong?

* * *

How had everything gone so wrong?

As I sat in the muck at the rear of my personal stone tomb, I thought back to how proud I was when I put on my Dark Brotherhood outfit and snuck out into the wilderness to look for a frostbite spider nest. They were all over the place in the forests near Dawnstar, so I didn't think it would be much of a problem to find one. Then, I would sneak into the nest, grab a few eggs, put them in the feather-filled sack I had brought along for safekeeping, and head back to Sanctuary. No one would even notice I was gone!

The only person generally awake in the dead of night was Babette, and she was holed up in her lab working on potions and curatives. Cicero had not yet come back to Sanctuary by the time I was sent to bed, and I feared that he might come in at some inopportune time and ruin my efforts. Hecate had been so worried about him that she had barely paid any attention to me except to tuck me in.

"I'm so sorry you had to spend most of New Life Day alone," she had said as she pulled the blankets up to my chin. "I'll make it up to you tomorrow, I promise."

"It's okay," I told her. Though we hadn't celebrated holidays back home, my mother had made a lot of similar promises to me during my childhood. I wasn't angry or bitter; I just knew that adults did important things. "I understand adult stuff was going on. It happens. I remember sometimes my mom had to do adult stuff with strange men," I added, which seemed to make Hecate feel worse instead of better judging by the look on her face. As long as she was making promises anyway, I figured it wouldn't hurt to try for one more. "Can we go sledding tomorrow?"

"Sure," she said with a small smile. She even kissed me on the forehead before leaving the room. I didn't really expect her to keep her word—the Listener had a lot of work to do, after all—but it was nice that she would say as much.

Once she had been gone for what I considered long enough, I slipped out of bed, put on my Dark Brotherhood outfit, and snuck out of Sanctuary. I managed to get out the Black Door without any difficulties, priding myself on being a stealthy master assassin. The cold rain and mud outside were detriments and I worried about getting sick like Cicero had, but I considered myself moderately wilderness savvy after spending nearly three months on the roads between Riften and Windhelm.

The truth was that after less than an hour in the forest I felt like I was hopelessly lost. I had no idea what spider tracks might look like—or even if such things existed, not that I would have found anything in the drizzling rain. Despite the cold and the dark, I was set and determined to carry through with my plan. It was the only way I could feel really good about myself again. I had dreaded looking Babette in the eye after my talk with Nazir, and it had been sheer hell to avoid her for the rest of New Life Day while everyone else was gone.

Still, sometime in the dead of night, after I felt chilled to the bone, I had managed to stumble onto a cluster of spider eggs. I say "stumble onto" because I literally walked through a mass of damp webbing, tripped over my own feet while I was scrambling to get it out of my eyes, and fell into the nest. I came face-to-face with the skeleton of a desiccated corpse, its body folded up on itself like a pretzel, before I scrabbled backwards in the mud away from it. I could hear chittering noises coming from the mess I had just made of the webbing and bones; when I scooted back forward to look, I could see dozens of hand-sized spiders swarming around on a fresher deer corpse stuffed into the webbing cocoon.

Before I could more than register the baby spiders and wonder if they would still be trainable even though they had already hatched, I heard the splash of something heavy dropping into the mud behind me. Looking back, I saw a spider roughly the size of a horse descending from a cluster of nearby trees, its eight legs sloshing mud around as it brought its weight fully to rest on the damp earth. It screeched at me inhumanly and slipped in the mud, its thigh-thick legs seeking traction as its tried to charge me.

Only its initial pause saved my life. Before it could get up to speed, I was back on my feet and running as fast as I could manage. My nightmare flight through the dark forests was a blur, filled with half-glimpsed shapes, barely-dodged venom, and freezing muck. I had finally managed to find what seemed to be safety, but Sithis only knew how long I could manage to hide in a stony crevice in this weather before I froze to death. Or until I starved, if I somehow avoided freezing but the spider stayed angry at me long enough for it to matter…

Between the darkness and the morbid thoughts, I was entirely surprised when my fluttering, outstretched hand encountered something warm and furry. I jerked it back quickly, worried I had encountered some sort of angry tunnel-dwelling hell-mole, but was surprised when I heard a whimper coming from where my hand had just been. I strained my eyes in the darkness, barely able to make out shapes sharing the crevice with me. I fumbled forward, hands nervously feeling ahead, and was even more surprised this time when something wet and rough and warm passed over my knuckles.

I froze, not wanting to startle whatever had just licked me into perhaps biting me instead. As I cautiously felt around, my new neighbor and I discovered one another's existence. My hands and poor sight managed to make out a warm fur-covered shape, slightly smaller than a breadbox, and a larger fur-covered shape that was stiff and cold, partially sunk into the mud. I guessed that I was feeling some sort of animal and its cub; the mother had chosen this as a den and died here, and only this single cub remained alive.

My heart went out to the small creature that was licking my hand more enthusiastically now. I knew what it was like to share a small space with a dead parent, after all. The barely-seen creature and I amicably shared space for the rest of the night, keeping each other warm and passing the time in close company. By the time the rain stopped and moonlight began to leak into the tight crevasse, I had already made my decision.

* * *

When I came staggering back into Sanctuary just before dawn, Babette was waiting for me just inside the Black Door, a stern look on her face and one foot tapping impatiently.

"Aventus," she began like a reproachful mother, "where have you been all night? When Hecate finds out you snuck out, she's going to be quite cross! And with Cicero already sick! Why do you look like you were dragged behind a wagon for a mile?" She stopped pestering me when she saw the bag I was carrying suddenly squirm. "Did you bring a wild animal into Sanctuary?" Her nose scrunched up in distaste.

"I went out to try and find you a pet," I explained. "I knew you must have missed Lis a lot, so I wanted to find you a new spider, but…" The prize in my bag squirmed again. I would have to let it out soon if I wanted to avoid it ripping its way free. "I know it's not a spider, but I thought you might like a puppy instead."

"A puppy?" she asked, crossing her arms in front of her. "Seriously, Aventus, you're such a child. You can't make me forget about my poor Lis by getting…" She trailed off suddenly as the wolf cub pushed its head free of the sack.

"You don't like him then?" I asked, feeling crestfallen and foolish.

"Oh, Aventus, he's wonderful!" she cried suddenly, rushing forward to throw her arms around my neck.

"Um… He is?"

"Oh, yes!" She pulled the pup free from my arms and held it up to peer at it, a broad smile on her face. "Ice wolf blood is a powerful reagent in many philters and poisons! How did you know?"

"His blood? You're not going to hurt him, are you?" I was more shocked at the idea of Babette killing a present out of hand than the idea she might kill at all. We were both assassins, after all. Killing was kind of in the job description.

"Hurt him? Of course not!" she scoffed, tossing her hair over one shoulder with a shake of her head. "Only the crudest alchemists would waste such a valuable resource by killing it for a few doses of blood. It would be like killing the golden goose for a single egg!" She pulled the pup closer to her chest, cradling it with one arm while she petted it with the other. "No, something this valuable is a long-term investment. Lis was very useful for her venom, but an ice wolf's blood could be even better if properly exploited." She smiled again and threw the arm that had been petting the pup around my neck suddenly, though she caught herself before pressing up against my mud-spattered form.

"I'm glad you like it…" I said, confused and slightly unnerved. "Taking his blood won't hurt, will it?"

"Not at all," she murmured against my throat, before coughing slightly and pulling back to look at me. "I'm an expert at taking blood painlessly." She looked at the pup thoughtfully. "Have you named him?" she asked suddenly.

"No," I shook my head, "I thought you should. It's your present, after all." She pursed her lips thoughtfully.

"Well, I named Lis after a flower," she said. At my look, she continued. "In the old Breton tongue, 'lis' means 'lily.' Did you know that flowers have their own language?" I shook my head. "It's true. Each one means something different, like roses for love or daisies for innocence…" She trailed off, her face distant and sad for perhaps the first time since I had known her. I wondered if this had been a bad idea—well, a worse idea—when she turned to look at me again.

"Pavot," she said with enthusiasm. "His name is Pavot."

"Pavot," I repeated. "What does it mean?"

"It means 'poppy,'" she explained. "In the language of flowers, poppies represent consolation and release from melancholy." The newly-named Pavot yipped cheerfully and licked Babette's face again, apparently pleased with the decision. We both giggled like children at the pup's antics.

"You should go get cleaned up before someone wakes up and sees you," Babette said with a demure smile. "I won't tell on you for being out all night." She leaned in close to whisper, "I don't think Hecate would have gotten angry anyway. I just said that to scare you."

"You big fibber," I said, smiling back wickedly. We both burst out laughing again, Pavot yipping in time to our gusts of laughter.

We stood there on the stairs, holding hands and laughing until the sun came up and both of us snuck off to crawl into our beds. Babette took Pavot with her and even let him curl up at her feet as she slept. I was sore, bruised, and cold, but a quick rinse and a morning of sleep cured the worst of my ills. Poor Cicero turned out to have pneumonia, so I counted myself lucky that I had only been nearly murdered by a giant spider. Meena was curled up in a corner of the main hall, completely oblivious to me as I passed by; as far as I could tell, she was watching her paws as she slowly waved them in front of her face, a look of intense focus on her feline features. I had no idea what was going on there.

Still, despite everything, when I look back at that time—to Hecate, Nazir, Meena, Cicero, Babette, and me all living in one Sanctuary—I can't help but think that first New Life Day as a family was still the best one of my life.

* * *

…_to be continued…_


	10. Chapter 10: The Metric of Torture

**Chapter 10: The Metric of Torture**

"Scalpel. Pincers. Tongs. Barbed fork. Razor."

The litany went on and on. I had never imagined there were so many tools designed by human beings to hurt one another. I paid close attention, focusing my mind to retain as much as possible as Nazir named each device in turn. The Listener was here to personally supervise my training, so I couldn't risk being anything less than perfect.

"Sharpened spoon. Corkscrew. Steel skewer. Thumbscrews. Finger trap."

The whole thing was made more difficult by the begging and pleading of the woman chained to the wall nearby, but I was set and determined to not let anything ruin my training. I tuned her out the same way I would tune out any extraneous noise while I was listening to Nazir during our regular lessons. Even with only six of us living here, Sanctuary was never really quiet. Between Meena's antics and Cicero's attempts at music and poetry—most of it morbid—the caverns often echoed with noise of one sort or another.

"All right then," Nazir said, interrupting my focused attention. "That's everything. Do you understand how all of them work?"

"Yes," I replied confidently. My eyes flickered to Hecate, our Listener, briefly. Her face was still and stony, and I could read nothing in her icy blue eyes. I had hoped for some sign of approval since I had been advancing through my other lessons so rapidly, but on this day she was as silent as the Night Mother herself.

"What is the purpose of every object on this table?" Nazir asked me.

"To inflict pain," I responded easily. I was confused when Nazir shook his head.

"No, that's wrong," he rumbled. "Inflicting pain is the means to an end, not the end itself." He smiled grimly and threw a look at the woman on the wall sharp enough to shut her up. "Sometimes it can be a pleasant diversion for an assassin but when someone is in this room, it's not the goal."

"Then what is the goal?" I asked, trying to soak up as much knowledge as possible before the screaming began. "What are the tools for?"

"The purpose of these objects is to obtain truth."

"I thought that information obtained under duress was unreliable," I replied, parroting Nazir's lessons from the last several months.

"It's not their truth we're looking for, Aventus," he smirked. "It's yours."

* * *

To my surprise, Hecate had kept her promise to take me sledding after New Life Day, as much as she could manage.

As it turned out while I had been planning to sneak out, Cicero hadn't come back from the group's journey into Dawnstar at all. He had been out most of the night alone, picking flowers to make up for something he had said to Hecate while they were gathering information in the city. So much had happened on New Life Day that I wasn't really part of that it was hard to keep track of it all. The best I could figure, someone had stolen Hecate's identity from before her joining the Brotherhood, and Cicero had managed to make some lame joke about it that irked her enough he hadn't wanted to come back to Sanctuary.

I had managed to dodge getting sick on my jaunt through the snowy, drizzling wilderness around Dawnstar. Cicero hadn't been so lucky. By the time he came home he had nearly frozen to death from stumbling around outside in normal clothes, and he was desperately sick by the next morning. Even I had the good sense to wear a fur mantle over my Brotherhood outfit when I had gone out. I had wondered occasionally if Cicero actually had something wrong with him, and his trip into the killing cold for a few handfuls of flowers seemed to prove it to me.

When Hecate and I went out sledding over the hills around Sanctuary, I could tell right away that she was distracted. Her smiles were brittle from worry and her eyes kept flicking back toward the Black Door no matter how far away we wandered. After a couple of hours of playing in the early-morning snow, I offered to let her go back to take care of Cicero.

"Really?" she asked me, clearly torn between wanting to keep her promise and worrying about the jester.

"Go on back," I told her. "I'll get Meena to help me hunt some rabbits. She likes how they scream." I hefted up the wooden plank we had been using as a sled and hefted it over my shoulder. My practice with the mace had started to build my strength significantly, and I could swear that I was getting taller. I hoped that my show of maturity and strength would leave an impression on the Listener. My heart fell when she reached out and ruffled my hair with one gloved hand.

"You're a good kid," she said with a bright smile.

As I watched her go, I felt a sick sensation in my stomach. I didn't have enough experience with people to recognize it. I only knew that part of me was angry that her smile wasn't for me, but for the pneumonia-stricken fool laying sick back at home. And I resented being called a kid. I might be the youngest one in Sanctuary—except for maybe Babette, and I didn't know either of our ages for certain enough to debate it—but I was a member of the Dark Brotherhood too, by Sithis! I had killed a man and everything.

A man I still sometimes had nightmares about killing.

A man whose death had been so messy that I still preferred blunt weapons to sharp ones.

I shuddered through my furs at the memory of killing Rolff Stone-Fist. He had deserved it, there was no doubt about that on any level—yet somehow I still couldn't shake the memory of watching him gurgle up his last breath through bloody lips, of his sticky gore covering my hands and splattering up into my eyes…

Maybe that was why I couldn't get Hecate to show me the kind of approval I wanted. She was the leader of the Dark Brotherhood after all—the living voice of our Unholy Matron. Was it any wonder she had attached herself to a gleeful killer like Cicero? He might be a motley-wearing fool, but at least he didn't get faint at the sight of blood. Walking through the snow, crunching the rime of ice under my feet as I looked half-heartedly for Meena, I wondered how I could get the kind of approval from Hecate I longed for. More than that, I started to wonder for the first time exactly what kind of approval that was.

Vague meanderings and half-understood fantasies of myself as a great assassin floated through my mind until I finally gave up my search and went back to Sanctuary. Being alone was something I had gotten used to after my mother died, but living for even a couple of months with a family again had killed my taste for it. Better to be around people, even if they weren't paying attention to me directly.

* * *

It was time.

"Measure twice, cut once," Cicero intoned as he handed me the heated shears. "It's as useful an adage for torturers as it is for seamstresses." He grinned broadly and chuckled darkly in the back of his throat. Our occasional visits to the room before today had always been while it was empty, the better to familiarize me with the tools of the trade. I had known for months that Cicero was to be my trainer for this, but it still galled me.

In the four months since the Keeper had gotten disastrously sick, I had felt myself growing cooler toward him. He was a great assassin, yes—but he was also demanding, and loud, and frightening. It had given me a little thrill to help Hecate cheat the fool at cards for her birthday back in Sun's Dawn, but even that had turned into a farce with Cicero's help. My "help" had been used by the fool to ultimately beat the Listener and finagle a debt out of her. It hadn't been so bad at first—maybe a little embarrassing—but when Babette talked to me about it later, I realized how badly I had been used by Cicero in his gambit to one-up Hecate and it had turned galling.

A lot had happened since then, including the refurbishing of our long-disused torture chamber. When I first came to Dawnstar the room had simply been standing empty, coated in dust and holding nothing more than a few boxes. Now, after a few trips to Riften by Nazir to arrange for supplies from the Thieves Guild, the place was far fuller. The old, rusty wall manacles had been replaced and firmly fastened. An iron maiden sat in one corner while the other housed a stretching rack. Whips, pokers, daggers, other implements had been carefully categorized and organized for easy reference by Nazir's personal system—a system he had spent weeks teaching me.

It also held an old woman—my intended subject.

While Cicero had checked the tools himself—he seemed elated to finally be given the chance to test them out—Hecate had retreated to the far side of the room, sitting cross-legged on the ground with her back against the stone wall. In a rare gesture of affection, she had asked me to sit with her. I was almost shocked when she had patted her knee and had me curl up on her lap the same way she had done after I killed Rolff Stone-Fist.

"Don't you think I'm getting too big to sit on your lap?" I half joked. Truthfully, I was getting too big to sit on anyone's lap. In four months, I had grown another three inches and gone through two more Dark Brotherhood outfits. I had always been big for my age, so I had rapidly outsized Babette and I was worried about hurting Hecate if I sat on her. The other side of that was that I desperate wanted to sit on Hecate's lap and just curl up like when I was smaller. But Cicero being in the room while I did it made me feel uncomfortable in a way I couldn't begin to name.

She simply patted her thigh and I accommodated her. Hecate didn't talk very much when we were together; I got the impression that she didn't have a lot to say to a "kid," which made me even more eager to grow up. Even with another three inches of height, I was still shorter and thinner than our Listener. We sat there like mother and son while Cicero hummed happily over the implements and the old woman chained to the wall continued to beg and plead with him.

Despite Hecate's insistence that we were all brothers and sisters before the Night Mother, I still privately continued to think of her as my adopted mother from time to time. The Night Mother was our Unholy Matron but she was a distant and elderly relation. I imagined her as being more like a grandmother, the elder of a family who guided us and watched over us. Hecate was the voice of that elder, and Babette and I were the younger generation. I wanted to think of Cicero as a crazy uncle more than my adoptive father, but it was difficult to make that distinction given his and Hecate's obvious relationship.

When Nazir had told me that I would begin the next phase of my training a few months before, I hadn't been exactly eager about the idea, but his stern guidance had made it clear that it wouldn't be optional. The first time we visited the torture chamber, Hecate had come along. And the second. And every time after that. As the chamber filled with the implements of pain I had grown more eager to make our semi-weekly visits, knowing that Hecate would be waiting there for us.

Now that it was Mid Year I was even more eager to show off what I had learned. My eagerness had dampened somewhat when we arrived at the torture chamber to find Cicero waiting for us. Nazir had departed quickly to take care of other business, and I had spent almost an hour just curled up with Hecate talking about nothing in particular when Cicero finally spoke to me.

"Is Aventus ready?" he called without looking up from the knife he was holding.

"Yes," I said, leaning forward. I hoped that I looked more confident about plying the torturer's trade than I felt. I was still somewhat queasy about the idea of all the blood that would surely come out of our victim. I was less concerned about the woman herself. After all, the Brotherhood would never harm a truly innocent person; ours was a holy calling and I still had no doubt about the righteousness of what we did.

It didn't hurt that the old crone they had picked looked a lot like Grelod the Kind. She had the same thin, pinched features, the same cruel face, the same cold eyes. The fact that she was pleading for her sorry hide played false to my eyes. I didn't believe for a minute her protestations of innocence—the very fact that she had been picked to be here was proof that she was guilty of something.

Cicero smiled cheerfully before turning to his victim. "Hello, hello!" he chirped. "You're going to be our test subject today. Lucky you!" His glee was disconcerting but I supposed that it was good for someone to love his work. I couldn't imagine how terrible it must be for most people to drudge through their lives without any happiness for their occupation. Even if I resented Cicero a little bit, I couldn't help but admire his work ethic.

"Please, this is about my husband's money, isn't it?" the woman gasped, terrified before even suffering a single cut. "I'll tell you where I hid it from the tax collectors. I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

I was right. Tax evasion wasn't a serious crime, certainly—but it was something. And where there was one corrupt act, surely another was buried deeper.

"No, no, no!" Cicero scolded, clicking his tongue in frustration. "You spoke much too soon. You were supposed to wait and let Cicero show the boy what to do. Now what can Cicero do? Humph! I suppose showing where to cut for the most amount of time with the least bleeding will have to suffice. Lesson plan change, sorry." His playful grin was not the least bit apologetic. I didn't think he was really sorry at all.

"Come close, child." My resentment flared up again at being called a child, so I looked to Hecate before obeying immediately. "How can Aventus learn from so far away?" he insisted, seemingly annoyed at my hesitation. "Most of the training is in the holding of the blade anyway. Cicero will stab and slice and cut. Then it will be Aventus' turn. Generous Cicero will not be greedy and not share."

Part of me hoped that Hecate would say no. I was still squeamish about cutting implements, and I didn't like working so close to Cicero while he held knives. Who knew if he still held a grudge about my cheating during mage poker? The fact that Hecate had asked me to do it wouldn't be relevant to the madman; she could do no wrong in his eyes. When she nodded her approval at me, I knew that there was no getting out of it. Since it couldn't be avoided, the only thing to do then was to do it well enough that she would be proud of me. I would win her approval by outdoing the jester at his own cruel tasks, the way any good assassin would do.

"Did you bring a blade?" he asked, and I nodded. "Good, good. Now watch."

Then the cutting began.

* * *

One of the biggest advantages of living in the Dawnstar Sanctuary was being next to the ocean. In all but the coldest month of the year the water was clear enough to go fishing, either from shore or by wading out to one of the large rocks near the shore. Now that it was late spring, my contribution to Nazir's nightly repasts had increased significantly. It gave me a real sense of pride to contribute to the well-being of the Sanctuary, even if I hadn't yet been allowed to take my first contract. Nazir had started talking about a "new phase" to my training, and I hoped that it would be the last phase before actually getting to start taking contracts.

Fishing was the closest thing I had to a hobby. My first couple of months in Sanctuary had been too busy with basic training and getting settled in to worry about it; there had been a period where training lasted from the time I got up to the time I gulped down a few bites of dinner and immediately collapsed into bed afterward. Now that I was competent with the basics of weapons and infiltration, I had a bit more free time. After Babette got up in the evenings, we would spend time playing together or her listening to me talk about my training while she worked on her potions and poisons, but that still left hours of the day where I was left to my own devices. The solution had come to me one night while Nazir was complaining about the cost of fish from Dawnstar's market.

"It's criminal what these people charge for a bushel of salted fish!" he had railed while carting in the week's groceries. "And I say that as a man who once drowned a widow in her own bathtub!"

"Why complain about a few septims?" Hecate chuckled, plucking a red apple off the top of a barrel and biting into it with a hearty crunch. "It's not like the Brotherhood isn't making money these days."

"That's not the point," he grunted sourly. "Damn Nords think they can gouge me because I'm a Redguard living outside of town. I can't wait until the Empire crushes those racist bastards and…" He trailed off, looking up at Hecate guiltily. Her face was turned into a frown, but she didn't say anything; she just turned and walked out of the room, dropping the rest of the uneaten apple into a waste bin as she went.

"Never talk about politics with friends," Nazir sighed. I had been sitting in the main room when he came in, and I trotted over to help him bring in the supplies. Ever since the revelation of the existence of a false Dragonborn a few months before, Hecate had been sensitive to any talk about the civil war. Most of the time we remembered to not talk about it in front of her, but there were occasional slip-ups that left her in a bitter mood for hours on end.

"Why don't we just fish for our own food?" I asked as we were putting things away in the kitchen.

"Do I look like a fisherman?" Nazir asked in return. "The only thing I know about the sea is that I spent two months on a boat once. It was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life, up there with almost being castrated by an angry hagraven." I always wondered how many of Nazir's stories were made up for humor, but it was considered impolite in the Dark Brotherhood to ask about a sibling's past. "I'm willing to eat fish, but the idea of actually trying to wrestle my food from its native habitat doesn't appeal to me at all."

"Cicero's trip to Dawnstar was unpleasant too," the jester said as he wandered into the kitchen and began rifling through the half-unpacked food. He made no offer to help, simply sorting through things and pushing them around, occasionally muttering about carrots and sweetrolls. When he saw that nothing of the sort was in the offing he finally continued, "Sick, sick, sick of the rocking, tossing, rolling, throwing upon the gray waves! It was horrible! Horrible!"

"Weren't you coming to Skyrim from Cheydinhal?" Nazir asked, sweeping some of the food out of Cicero's reach. "Wouldn't it have been easier for you to come overland through the Pale Pass?"

"Ah!" Cicero cried, plucking a carrot from my hands with the deftness of a swooping hawk. "Just what poor Cicero was looking for!" He shoved the carrot into his mouth before flipping over onto his hands and walking out of the kitchen upside-down, chewing on the carrot the whole way.

"Damn fool…" Nazir muttered darkly. "Hope he chokes on that carrot." I got the impression that Nazir didn't like Cicero very much. While I'd had my own grievances with the jester lately, I still admired him as a servant of the Night Mother and thought he was wonderfully funny on his good days. Nazir never seemed to even smirk at Cicero's antics.

"I could bring in fish," I piped up, trying to move the conversation away from Cicero and back to food. Nazir always seemed happier when talking about food, and he was a good cook. I sometimes wondered why he wasn't fat with as much time as he spent in the kitchen. "I used to go fishing for my meals almost every day when I lived in Windhelm. Fishing for six people isn't much different than fishing for one. It just takes longer." I thought about it for a moment. "Honestly, the boats down at the docks scared away the fish a lot of the time, so I don't think it would even take that much longer since the water is calmer up here."

"Hmmm," Nazir pondered. "As long as it wouldn't interfere with your training, I suppose we could see…"

"It won't!" I insisted. I hadn't realized how much I had missed fishing until Nazir brought it up. I had always had a sense of real peace while I was holding a line and sitting on the docks. Life was better in Dawnstar than it had been in Windhelm—or, Divines forbid, in Riften—but I had been full of nervous energy for weeks without any idea of what to do with it.

After that, I had gone out to fish almost every evening after training. Relaxing in the cool air had turned into lounging shirtless in the early spring sun. Every night I would come back with a brace of fish for Nazir; sometimes he would cook them right away, while other times he would salt them or smoke them for later use, but they never went to waste. Meena particularly enjoyed getting the opportunity to eat fresh fish as often as possible. The Khajiit lived up to her cat-like appearance in both adoring fish and hating water.

The praise that Nazir received for dinner might not have been directed at me personally—but I felt pride for helping nonetheless. It also reinforced Nazir's occasional lesson that the glorious task isn't always the most important one. Sometimes acting as a sibling's backup on a difficult contract is just as important as delivering the final blow. It was something I had a hard time remembering during training, so getting to feel the joy of contributing without being in the spotlight was a pleasant experience.

As a reward for my help, Nazir even built me a small rowboat so I could go further out and get better catches for the Sanctuary. He didn't let me go out unsupervised; even in the calm seas north of Dawnstar he didn't feel comfortable letting me take a boat out alone. Still, he spent most of his time on the shore while I manipulated the small craft in the soft afternoon tides. The one time Nazir had to go out on contract himself, Cicero had come out with me to keep watch at Hecate's request; his resulting seasickness when he tried to accompany me out on my little boat gave me a small bit of petty joy.

The best times were the few times that Hecate had come out on the water with me. The first couple of times, weeks apart, had been trying for her. She didn't understand that fish were scared off by noise, and her usual quiet withdrawal apparently turned into nervous chattiness when away from solid land. I wondered more than once if I could really be the only member of the Dark Brotherhood who didn't mind boats. After a while, Hecate started bringing books to read while I fished and it seemed to make her happier to accompany me.

When we were out, Hecate preferred to dress lightly to soak up the sun and work on her tan so she rarely wore more than short leggings and a strip of cloth across her chest. Having lived most of my life in Windhelm, surrounded by Nords, the idea of darkening in the sun was a strange concept to me; most Nords were pale folk, and Windhelm spent most of the year under clouds. I enjoyed the feeling of the sun on my bare chest, but I wasn't intentionally trying to darken my skin. I found myself staring at Hecate a lot as we sat in amicable silence, fascinated by the way her color incrementally changed from a light tone to something more bronzed. Despite the cool weather in the north of Skyrim, sitting in the direct sun could still get quite warm, so I was often entranced by the sweat rivulets moving in slow, lazy arcs across her skin.

Sometime in the late spring we had been out for most of an afternoon when a sudden spring wind blew up out of the east. The boat rocked suddenly and I cursed as I tried to use my weight to right the small vessel before it could tip over. Hecate tilted with the rocking of the boat, losing her book and diving to one side to grab it before it went into the water. She managed to catch the spine with the tips of her fingers and sent it spinning through the air toward me, where I had enough presence of mind to grab for it. It bounced off my hands and wound up laying on one of the boards between my legs. Hecate started to stand up to come for the book when I waved her back down.

"Don't stand up!" I nearly shouted. "The way the waves are pushing us right now, we could capsize."

"What should I do then?" she asked, seeing that I was too busy struggling with the oars to hand her book back. I wasn't used to being asked my opinion about anything so I just shrugged.

Hecate's face turned down for a moment, and then she carefully shifted her weight forward to stay in the center of the boat while scooting forward. The boat pitched again and the book slid halfway off the board. Before it could fall all the way off and wind up in the several inches of water accumulated in the bottom of the rowboat, Hecate gracefully tilted forward from her sitting position so that she was on her knees, her hands planted to either side of me to keep her balance.

Our different heights, combined with the awkward position, meant that her breasts were—for just a moment—pushed directly into my face. Suddenly, I was having even more trouble keeping the boat righted as all the blood seemed to flow out of my head. I felt dizzy and lightheaded as I breathed in her scent and felt her sweat painting my cheek.

"Dammit," she cursed, oblivious to my discomfort. "Sorry. Let me just…" She adjusted her posture so that she was holding herself up with one hand while the other sought the book. Her breasts lifted out of my face just long enough for the back of her seeking hand to brush against my crotch before finding the book. If I had felt dizzy before, the painful tightness I was now feeling below the waist was even more discomfiting. She didn't seem to notice at all, thankfully; she was too busy trying to adjust herself back into a sitting position without losing her balance or overturning the rowboat. Somehow I managed to get the boat back to the sandy shore without tossing us both into the sea.

As I sat there, leaning forward onto my haunches in an attempt to make the painful sensation go away, Cicero came running up. He pranced around in the surf nervously, stooping to help Hecate get out of the rowboat.

"Are you all right, Listener?" he asked, his voice a high, worried tone. "Loyal Cicero was ready to leap into the waves to save you if the boat overturned!"

"Capsized," I correctly absently. Neither of them paid any attention to me, which was probably for the best.

"I'm fine," Hecate insisted, pushing Cicero back to a less intrusive distance. "Aventus kept the boat under control just fine. We were never in any danger." She looked over at me and smiled graciously. I stayed bent double, breathing heavily. It wasn't completely an act; bringing the boat in safely had been hard work, and I honestly didn't think I would have been able to manage it a few months before. The training I had been doing for Nazir had really made me stronger.

When I looked over at Cicero, I saw a flash of something ugly cross his face. Was he mad at me for almost hurting Hecate? I couldn't help but believe it was something else, like he knew what was happening to me at the moment and disapproved. Hecate came over and leaned down to give me a brief peck on the cheek, and the painful tightness surged again before becoming something warmer and more pleasant. By the time I managed to sort it out, the two of them had wandered off together.

I flopped back and sprawled in the boat, listening to the surf coming in and smelling the salt air. I wasn't sure what had just happened, though I had a few theories based on things I had heard from other kids back in Windhelm and now recognized it as a sign of getting older. Before they had started palling around with Haakig, Lasskar and Vigurl Deep-Water had sometimes spoken fondly about "growing a horker tusk" as a sign of becoming a teenager. I wasn't sure how old I was, but I supposed this officially made me not a child anymore.

Beyond any vague metaphor by the Deep-Water brothers, though, I wasn't sure what to do about it. There had been some pleasant moments in the process but being alone afterward stung more than catching a cold wave in the face. I felt a bitter melancholy that I was growing up but the one person I really wanted to notice that fact was ignorant of it. Worse than ignorant—she was actively choosing someone who spent most of his time acting like a child.

Hecate had saved my soul and given me closure. She had taken me in and given me a new family and a new purpose. My favorite moments were the ones I could spend with her. But sometimes being around her at all was a kind of torture.

* * *

Two hours after the lesson had begun, it ended abruptly with the old woman breathing her last.

I had paid close attention through the intervening time, watching where Cicero cut and listening to his running narration about the proper way to perform an incision. Despite my initial nausea at the sight of blood and flayed flesh, it had become almost fascinating to listen to his clinical analysis of the ways in which skin and veins could be manipulated to produce certain effects. Sometimes he would perform a deep cut and barely elicit any reaction at all from the prisoner, while at other times he could make a shallow cut—barely a scratch—and pull forth ragged, terrible screams.

The prisoner babbled while we worked, screaming out all of her secrets—real and invented. She claimed that vengeance would befall us from her relatives if she died, that she could pay us an emperor's ransom for freeing her, that she had mouths to feed and people to care for. She spat curses, shouted libel, and wept prayers to the Divines. In the end, she was reduced to occasional weak mutters, tears leaking from her old eyes as blood leaked from her many wounds.

About halfway through my attempt at making a saw incision along her ribs, she coughed feebly once and then just stopped. I paused, a frown of concentration on my face. I looked up at her, noticing that her eyes were peacefully closed in death. Rolff's eyes had been open, staring hatred at me until someone had cut him free from his bindings and dragged his carcass away. This old woman—whose name I didn't even know—looked like she was just sleeping. Had Grelod looked so peaceful when she died?

"Is that it then?" I asked Cicero. "Did I kill her?"

"No," he chuckled, "you simply hurt her a great deal. I'm afraid that she died the second she was chosen for this." He smiled wistfully and put down his own knife before gently taking mine from my nerveless fingers. "That's the way it should be, you know—the way it used to be. When someone draws the eye of the Dark Brotherhood, they're already dead. The hand that holds the knife is just an extension of that fact. No one escapes the Brotherhood."

I paused for a moment, the nausea suddenly flowing away from me like the tide in the wake of Cicero's words. He was right, of course. No matter what personal grudge I might have over Cicero's attitude and behavior, he was still the closest to the Night Mother of any of us. He had been serving her longer than I had been alive; even without hearing her voice, he knew her will better than I could ever hope. His certitude and righteousness inspired me.

"Thank you for the lesson, Keeper," I said gravely. "I hope to benefit from your experience again in the future." I wondered if I should say anything else, but I stopped up short when I saw how bloody my hands and clothes were. The blood didn't seem to bother me as much now. It was just a warm, red fluid, and not so different between humans and animals.

"Go on," he laughed, reaching out to ruffle my hair like a proud father. "Clean up. Get ready for dinner." I expected to see his gloves coated in gore when he pulled his hand away from my head, but as far as I could tell the only part of Cicero that had seen any spatter from our lesson was a few drops on his face. I turned and walked out, wondering how he managed to keep himself so clean while we were doing such messy work. Rather than wait for the next time and risk forgetting, I decided to go back and ask him then.

Though I hadn't been gone for more than a minute, by the time I got back to the torture chamber, Hecate was in tears. She was still sitting on the ground, but Cicero was kneeling over her, her balled up fists pounding lightly on his chest as he struggled to hold her by the shoulders. He said something I couldn't quite make out and she dropped her hands, leaning her tear-streaked face onto his chest and bawling loudly. His hands snaked around to her back as he drew her closer, obviously trying to comfort her.

What in Sithis' name had he done this time?

My stomach boiled with anger at the jester for spoiling my revelation. I was so sure that Hecate would be proud of me for learning my lessons well, but once again it was Cicero sending her into tears or fury before coming back and trying to undo what he had done. And she kept letting him! What hold did the jester have over Hecate that she would stay with him after so many pains? I simply couldn't understand it.

Watching the two of them hold one another in the torture chamber, a dead woman hanging on the far wall, I could only think that it felt like the opposite of what I felt in the boat. Instead of my blood draining from my head into other parts of my body it felt like it was all just draining out of me, leaving me weak and cold. I still admired Cicero in a lot of ways, but all I could think was that if it were me holding Hecate, she wouldn't be so upset in the first place.

It couldn't be, though. She was at least twenty years older than me, and Cicero was even older than her. The two of them were similar in age, like I was with Babette, and that meant a lot to adults. Even if I became a great assassin, it couldn't happen fast enough. I couldn't grow up quickly enough for Hecate to care for me the way she cared for Cicero. By the time I was a grown man, she would be an old woman—which mattered less to me than it surely would to her. I would never be anything more than a child to my Listener.

I ran from the torture chamber, unseen by the two assassins. I bumped into Babette as I stumbled to my room, almost literally knocking her down. I flopped onto my bed face down and struggled to hold in the bitter tears of disappointment. I didn't realize that Babette had followed me in until I felt her weight settle next to me on the narrow bed. After a moment's hesitation, she laid her cold hand on the back of my head, silently offering me comfort even though she had no way of knowing what was wrong.

As I laid there, Babette stroking my hair and blood soaking unnoticed into my mattress from where I had failed to wash up, I contemplated the nature of pain. How strange it was to think that another person's happiness could have the same measure as my terrible torture. That was my truth, it seemed, whatever Nazir might have meant otherwise. I never did cry that night, despite the cutting pain in my heart.

* * *

The day after I tortured a woman to death, Nazir told me that I had passed my lesson. Soon, I would be going on my first contract. It was a bitter success, but I took his commendation gracefully and with thanks.

"Did you ever understand what I meant?" he asked before I left to do more training with Meena.

"No," I admitted honestly. He shook his head, seemingly disappointed. "What was I supposed to learn?"

"When a man commits to violence," Nazir said, sitting down to look me in the eye, "it doesn't take any specific quality of spirit. Every man wants to live, so every man is willing to kill to preserve his own life. Any man who loves is willing to kill to protect what he loves." I thought of Hecate and silently nodded. "Killing without those drives takes a special kind of person. Hecate brought you here because she hoped you were that kind of person. I didn't agree with her…" At my shocked expression, Nazir quickly continued, "…at first."

"Why not?" I asked, feeling defensive.

"You killed Rolff Stone-Fist out of desperation," he said bluntly. "I just wasn't sure if it was the right kind of desperation. Hecate has a soft spot for you that I've never seen her have for anyone else but that damned jester." My heart surged when he said that but if my face betrayed it, Nazir gave no sign. "She can sometimes let her emotions blind her to practical concerns… but it's led us right in the past where being more 'logical' got people hurt. Even killed."

I nodded. Hecate had told me enough about what happened at Falkreath to know that Nazir was talking around the burning of the old Sanctuary again. He coughed into his fist and continued after a long pause.

"I don't think you have the stomach for torture, Aventus," he said. "But you've got the stubbornness to do it anyway, and to do it well. That's the sort of person you are: You never give up. I just think it's a damn shame that I had to tell you. A man should always be aware of his greatest virtue as well as his worst vice." He stood up to leave. Before he walked out, once I had properly taken a moment to digest him calling me a man, I called out.

"At least I already know my worst flaw," I laughed. "I don't think ahead far enough. Gotten me into trouble more than once." Nazir only laughed.

"That's not it, kid," he snorted. "Not by a long shot."

"What's my worst vice then?" I asked, genuinely confused. He paused but didn't turn around.

"That's not for me to say," he rumbled. "You'll have to find that one out on your own."

Once he was gone, I thought about what Nazir had said to me. I decided that he was right: I wasn't the sort of person to just give up in the face of hardship. I had survived my mother's death, Honorhall Orphanage, a season on the road, and a year alone. I could endure anything. I might be a quick study, but my real virtue had always been my ability to persevere despite the odds and the pain. My heart felt light again for the first time in days.

I decided then that I would take Nazir's words to heart. I wouldn't be disappointed or frustrated with the obstacles that seemed to be in my way, because I had already endured worse and overcome. Hecate might not see me as a man now, but she would eventually. All I had to do was persevere. It was amazing to me how pain could turn into pride with just a change in perspective. Such was the measuring stick of torture, I supposed—the way that the worst pain could transform into the greatest motivation.

Pain was just nature's way of motivating us, I decided. And torture was our way of motivating others—not an end, like Cicero and Meena seemed to believe, but just a means to it. The more pain we endured or inflicted, the greater the end result had to be in order to justify it. I was happy with that equation. In the end, it said that pain meant something, and I was happier when things had meaning.

* * *

…_to be continued_…


	11. Chapter 11: Springtime for Children

**Chapter 11: Springtime for Children**

I was one with the darkness. I moved through the night, hunting my prey with the stealth and skill born of months of training with the Dark Brotherhood—an elite order of assassins with a history stretching back centuries. My mentors had taught me weapons, infiltration, and more in their effort to shape me into a living tool of the Dread Lord Sithis and his mouthpiece in the world of Mundus, the Night Mother. Our Unholy Matron received prayers of vengeance from the betrayed and the aggrieved, and through the auspices of the Listener we received her commandments.

My current mission had not come from so exalted a source, though it was from close at her left hand. No, this mission had come to me from the Keeper, a position considered second only to the Listener herself. The Keeper's holy task was to preserve the physical body of the Night Mother, an ancient and withered corpse that had originally been housed in one of the Brotherhood's sanctums in Cyrodiil, the cosmopolitan heart of the Empire. After the war with the Altmeri Dominion, however, Cyrodiil had begun to purge the Brotherhood's ranks, forcing the Keeper to evacuate the Night Mother's corporeal vessel from its original tomb to the northern reaches of Skyrim.

To be chosen as Keeper, an assassin had to show total devotion to the Dark Brotherhood and to the Night Mother. He had to be skilled at his profession, yet willing to retire his blade in order to spend all of his time seeing to the defense and consecration of the Night Mother's body. I understood the level of competence and skill and loyalty that was required of the position.

I just didn't really understand how all of those things applied to Cicero.

Since his recovery from pneumonia after New Life Day, Cicero had been a lot more bearable to be around. He was having more good days than bad, it seemed; he was less mad and more coherent. He had even been able to participate in the mage poker game the Brotherhood had put together to celebrate Hecate's thirty-third birthday. It was hard for me to believe that the Listener was so old—almost twenty years older than me!

Despite his improved behavior and demeanor, he was still something of a motley-clad lunatic. He talked to himself, he sang morbid songs he had written as a hobby, he told bad jokes… Actually, a lot of his jokes were pretty funny, especially the one about the woman who looked like a horker. That one always cracked me up, even if it made Nazir look like he was considering breaking the Fifth Tenet.

I just had a hard time reconciling the jester who wandered around Sanctuary in a half-aware daze with the lethal assassin I knew he could be. I had seen Cicero's speed and strength; he trained me almost daily in armed combat and unarmed defense. Along with Meena, the only non-human in the Brotherhood, he helped make me competent at the arts of stealth and infiltration. When I joined the Brotherhood, I could barely walk across a bare floor without making enough racket to wake the dead. By the time the weather started to warm in First Seed, I could slip a sweetroll from the kitchen without drawing Nazir's notice.

Sometimes, though… Sometimes I would find Cicero standing alone in a hallway, staring into space, his eyes rimmed with tears. Or arguing with people no one else could see. If I tried to talk to him when he was acting like that, it was even odds whether he would laugh it off as a funny joke or fly into a screaming rage and storm away. I had learned to fear Cicero, even as I grew to care about him as a surrogate father.

Not that I was supposed to think of him that way, of course. In the Dark Brotherhood, we were all supposed to be brothers and sisters before the Night Mother, with the Listener as eldest and most responsible sibling. I had never quite been able to get that right; more often than not, I thought of Hecate as my adoptive mother, and Meena and Nazir as my aunt and uncle. Babette was my sister, though I wasn't sure whether she was older or younger than me. I might have thought of Cicero as just another crazy uncle if it weren't for Hecate's relationship with him.

Between Cicero's relationship with the woman who had saved my soul—and probably my life—and his vaunted position as the Keeper, it was hard to say no when he asked for something. Also, I owed him a fairly large sum of money after borrowing against a future contract payment to buy Hecate a New Life Day present. Even more than all of that, I admired and respected the jester—as an assassin and a family member, if not as a sane member of the human race. I cared about Cicero, and even pitied him a little.

So when Cicero had started asking me to run errands for him, it hadn't been in my heart to say no to him—no matter how petty or bizarre those errands might have been… which is how I came to be running through the forests around Dawnstar in the middle of a cool spring night looking for an animal whose appearance I barely knew. Cicero had said that finding the creature was vital to my training and not to come back until morning if I couldn't find it. Nazir had been talking about a "new stage" to my training for a few weeks now, so in the hopes that this might be it, I gladly agreed.

That was the beginning of my hunt for the elusive beast called the snipe.

* * *

My training schedule had slacked off a bit since New Life Day, so I actually had more free time as well as energy. I had just started fishing again as well, but after dinner each night I made sure to set aside some time to play with Babette. I still felt bad about doubting her stories about life in the old Sanctuary at Falkreath, despite her obvious affection for Pavot, the ice wolf cub I had gotten her as a combination New Life Day and apology gift. So whenever I had time in the evenings and she wasn't too busy with her alchemy, we would find something to do together.

Most nights we played games that didn't involve too much running around. I had enough energy now that I didn't immediately collapse into bed after gulping down my food, but I was usually still sore and a little dragged out. If Babette had been more willing to switch to a normal schedule we could have done more active games, but she was insistent on maintaining her nighttime hours. Privately, I thought that it was a little childish to stay awake all night and sleep during the day just because she could when everyone else kept more-or-less normal hours, but after my mistake during New Life Day, I wasn't about to say anything about it.

Babette had taught me about a dozen card games that could be played with two people, and had been the person who explained the basics of mage poker to me so I could play with the others on Hecate's birthday. I had still gone out first, but I blamed that more on my small starting stake and Hecate's clever plan to cheat than on any poor instruction on Babette's part. We had also tried out chess, a board game that Babette seemed fond of. Unfortunately for both of us, I just didn't have a head for it; I kept forgetting what pieces could move in what way, and finally Babette had just gotten frustrated and switched back to simpler games.

Hecate's birthday party had marked a complete break in my training. Nazir was busy dealing with Brotherhood business, which mostly meant being cooped up in an office most of the time, and Hecate and Cicero had gone up to Solitude to celebrate Heart's Day, a holiday for couples in love. That left just Babette, Meena, and myself, and Meena rarely deigned to play with us "kittens." On the few occasions she had broken down and participated, she had proven to be a bad winner and a bad loser in equal measure; she also seemed happy to keep herself entertained outside of Sanctuary much of the time.

Babette was the opposite of Meena when it came to entertainment. Getting Babette to even consider leaving Sanctuary for anything but herb-gathering was almost impossible. Even during the week Hecate and Cicero were gone, she preferred cards to tag. I wondered occasionally if poor Pavot was getting enough exercise, laying at his mistress' feet all day long, which was where he was almost every time I saw him.

"Come on, Babette," I whined for what felt like the hundredth time. "Pavot's going to get fat if we don't take him for walks. And it's still light enough out that we won't get lost or anything!" Babette glared at me with red-rimmed eyes, her mouth downturned in a frown of long suffering patience.

"It's bad enough that you woke me up early," she complained groggily. "But go outside while it's still light out? Forget it."

"Why not?" I pressed. "It's a beautiful day out. Much warmer than last week." In fact, it was still a lot colder than I liked it outside, but getting Babette to leave Sanctuary more often had turned into something of a crusade for me in the days that Hecate and Cicero had been gone. I had finally begun to suspect that Babette wasn't like other girls my age—and not just because she was an alchemist and an assassin at the tender age of twelve or thirteen. Her behavior was as bizarre as Cicero's in its own way.

"I don't like the glare," she snapped. "The light hurts my eyes. Especially when I've been woken up early." At that, she stared at me pointedly. It was true that I had tried to wake Babette up earlier than usual, but I had been bored out of my mind without training to do or people to fish for. And I didn't feel right taking Pavot out without Babette's permission. Since I had to wake her up to get her permission anyway, I had figured it was better to try and get her to come out too than just take her dog and run.

I gave Babette my best puppy-dog look, but she wasn't having any of it. I sighed and propped my back against the wall of her bedroom.

"Don't pout," she chastised, finally sitting up in her bed. "It's unbecoming."

Babette clutched her blanket to her chest with one pale hand, her dark hair cascading down the back of her nightdress and pooling on her pillow. She rubbed the back of her other hand across her eyes and made a jaw-cracking yawn. Babette's teeth glinted in the light spilling in from the hallway, seeming unnaturally white and sharp in the glow of the lanterns. I blinked a couple of times but when I looked again, everything seemed normal. Just shadows playing tricks on me, I supposed.

"Look," she finally said, "go on outside with Pavot. I'll catch up with the two of you after I've gotten a little more sleep. I stayed up too long this morning working on potions and I just want some rest."

"Okay…" I replied, even though I knew she was lying. It wasn't like when I had assumed she was lying before either; I had gotten up right after dawn to grab an early breakfast, and Babette had been nowhere near her laboratory. Still, after the previous debacle, I couldn't justify calling her out on it. I could only believe that she had a good reason for not wanting me to know why she felt the need to sleep almost ten hours and claim to still be tired.

"Do you want me to lay out any food for you?" I asked before I gathered up the ice wolf cub. "Nazir isn't cooking tonight since Meena is out of Sanctuary, but he put aside some cold cuts for us. I ate most of what there was already, but I can get him to put out more for you. Really, I don't see why he put out so little to begin with…"

"No, thank you," she said primly, beginning to lay back down. "No need to bother Nazir on my account. I'll just get something quick out of the cold chest when I get up."

That was another thing about Babette that I found unusual. In the nearly four months I had lived with the Dark Brotherhood, I couldn't remember ever seeing her eat a meal. I knew she had to eat, of course; everyone had to eat. But between her odd hours and her unwillingness to let others put themselves out for her sake, I couldn't recall actually watching Babette take a meal even once. I had seen her carrying empty dishes out of her room, or scrounging around in the kitchen occasionally, but never actually eating.

It was almost like…

I tried to shake the thought out of my head as I took Pavot out through the Black Door and into the evening sunlight, but it wouldn't leave me alone. As we played, I hated myself a little for still thinking unsupported nonsense about my best friend. Hadn't almost getting killed by a frostbite spider after New Life Day taught me anything? I had promised that I would be less hard on Babette in the future, and here I was thinking of her as a liar again, in deed if not directly in word.

Because it almost seemed like carrying empty plates and rummaging around in a kitchen without getting any food were the actions of a person who didn't eat, but who wanted others to think she did.

* * *

My first errand for Cicero had been simple enough. About two weeks after he and Hecate returned from their trip to Solitude, I had been playing in the main room with Pavot and Babette, which mostly consisted of throwing things for Pavot to fetch while Babette and I played cards. I had been a bit worried after bringing the wolf cub into Sanctuary that he might mark his territory the way wolves and dogs usually did, but Babette had shown herself to be amazing at house-training the small animal quickly.

Honestly, my biggest worry had been the wolf cub marking the Night Mother's coffin. I could easily have seen some horror befalling the poor little beast for having an "accident" on the Keeper's territory. Fortunately for everyone, Pavot wouldn't even go within eyeshot of the Night Mother's coffin; he would just stop at the doorway and shiver before slinking away with his tail between his legs.

About an hour after dinner, in the middle of a hand of cards, the Keeper came wandering into the main hall, looking more distraught than I had ever seen him without weeping or screaming being involved.

"Excuse me," he said politely enough, "but could poor Cicero have a moment of the boy's time?"

"Can it wait until after this hand?" I asked. I was on the verge of beating Babette at a game, and that was rare enough that I wanted to savor it. Cicero cocked his head slightly, looking down at my hand.

"Oh, but you'll never win with that hand!" he exclaimed. "You'd have to be bluffing!"

Babette smiled viciously and I sighed, laying down my cards in defeat. I couldn't tell if he had done it on purpose or just didn't know any better. After his canny win during the mage poker game I was leaning toward the former, but I really just couldn't tell with him.

"It seems the game is over!" he said gleefully, clapping his hands together. "Now that you're not busy, would you mind helping poor Cicero with his terrible, terrible dilemma?"

"Sure." And I meant it too. I didn't think it was an emergency, or Cicero wouldn't have been so mincing about not wanting to interrupt a card game. But I really did want to help. It made me feel like a part of the family to do favors for the others, like when I helped catch fish for dinner or caught rabbits for Meena.

"Wonderful!" He clapped his hands together again, more energetically this time, as though applauding a performance. "It seems that poor Cicero has forgotten to pick up nails for the shelving he is building for Mother's tomb. With all of the bother and befuddlement of the past few days, it simply slipped from my addled brain! Would you be a dear and run into Dawnstar to pick some up for me?"

"I suppose I could do that," I said. It would be good to go into town anyway. I had too much nervous energy now that I was back in physically good shape, and running to town and back would be good exercise.

"Excellent! Splendid!" Cicero danced a slight jig that made me smile. He pulled out a coin pouch and pushed it into my hands. "There are a few extra shiny, clinky coins in there for the boy to get himself something sweet while he's in town. Don't feel the need to rush back! See the sights! Young people should take their time to smell the mountain flowers!"

I laughed and stood up to grab my boots and coat before leaving. Cicero could be funny—even frightening—but he was never anything but generous. When I went to get my things, I saw Babette sitting at her alchemy lab with Pavot at her feet and a scowl on her face.

"I'm going into town," I told her. "Do you want to come with me?"

"No, thank you," she replied primly without looking at me.

"Well, do you need anything?" I really had hoped she would come with me into Dawnstar, but I hadn't actually expected it. Babette was a real homebody.

"I'm fine," she said, though her cold tone indicated she was anything but.

"Are you okay?" I pressed. Normally, I wouldn't have pushed, but she seemed to have gone from enjoying herself to angry even faster than normal. She couldn't be that mad about me skipping out on a card game when she had already won four hands in a row, could she?

"I just can't believe that you're letting Cicero turn you into his errand boy," she said in a way that made me feel about six inches tall.

"I'm not an errand boy…" That sounded lame, even to me. "I just want to help."

"By doing something Cicero could easily do himself if he weren't fobbing it off on you," she retorted scathingly. "He's just giving you make-work." She looked up at me, piercing me with a gaze that seemed far older than her years. "Cicero is playing you for a fool. I just hope you realize it before everyone else does." Her words chilled me, but I shook it off and left without saying another word to her.

As I trudged through the evening chill to Dawnstar, Babette's words haunted me. I couldn't imagine why Cicero would want to run me on errands if he didn't really need something. He seemed to like me… didn't he?

No, I told myself. It was just Babette being negative, the way she was sometimes. Nazir had been telling me since I started my training that it was important to contribute in whatever way we could, even if it didn't seem glamorous or glorious at the time. All of us had jobs to do outside of just killing people; it was a part of keeping the family running. Nazir was our Speaker, a position of prominence in the Dark Brotherhood, and he still cooked food for everyone. Hecate was our Listener, our connection to the Night Mother. Babette made potions. Cicero looked after the Night Mother's corporeal form. And Meena…

Well, most of us were useful outside killing people.

I really didn't mind running errands for Cicero if he needed my help. The fact that I still owed him more money than I comprehended for Hecate's New Life Day present was also a contributing factor in my willingness to be helpful. I had asked Nazir how much the daedric bow had cost once, and he had only laughed for a straight minute.

I promised myself that I would pick up his nails, grab something small for myself since he had insisted, and rush back to Sanctuary, just to show him how enthusiastic I was about the whole thing.

* * *

The darkness was my ally. That was what Nazir had always said, anyway. Honestly, with allies like darkness, I wasn't sure I needed enemies.

Despite my general lack of woodcraft, I had actually improved at tracking and hunting in the months since I had joined the Dark Brotherhood. Still, I was looking for an animal I had never seen before in a forest in the dark. A small amount of light filtered in through the forest canopy from the twin moons, which made getting hit in the face by branches and tripping over roots only a persistent annoyance instead of a constant hazard. By an hour past sunset, I was scratched and muddy. I was just lucky that Second Seed was warmer at night than when Cicero had started me on these stupid errands.

How did it get to this?

"Just a small favor," Cicero would say gleefully. Then I would agree, get on my boots and cloak, and go hunting for whatever it was he needed. Over two months of that had turned it from a one-time favor into an almost constant stream of small tasks. It seemed like three or four times a week, after practice, fishing and dinner, Cicero would need me to do something. The tasks had started out innocuous enough—small supplies that would only take me a short time to pick up and run back—but they kept getting increasingly bizarre.

Like fetching carrots from Dawnstar market since Nazir had "forgotten to buy them," only for the carrots Nazir had bought earlier to turn up later, hidden in a basket somewhere in Sanctuary.

Or the time that Cicero informed me that Pavot had somehow gotten past the Black Door without me or Babette knowing about it, and we had spent four hours looking for a lost wolf cub. As it turned out, Pavot hadn't gotten outside at all; we found him sleeping comfortably in an unused closet, gnawing on a soup bone.

Or when he had assigned me extra "stealth training" that consisted of hiding in the bushes along the road to Dawnstar and waiting for someone to spot me. It had taken me until almost midnight to realize that he hadn't told me what to do if no one spotted me.

The damnedest thing was that I kept agreeing to his idiotic tasks. Whenever I would try to refuse, Cicero would whimper and whine in a way that made me feel like I had stomped a kitten. He never mentioned the septims I owed him directly, but every now and then he would say something that would make me feel like a heel for borrowing so much money and then being stingy about doing little favors.

"Isn't it best family should help each other?" he would ask pitifully. Then he would look at me with his amber eyes watering as though he were about to break into tears, and every bit of resolve I had would disappear. I just couldn't refuse to do a favor for a member of my new family—especially not one who looked like he could break into tears if I said no.

Every time I went out, I invited Babette along. Her refusals had gone from short and terse to bitter reprisals for "playing the fool for a fool." As the weeks dragged on, I kept asking her to come with me more out of stubbornness than desire. On nights I got back to Sanctuary in time to hang out with her before bedtime, she would be mysteriously "busy." Any time I did a favor for Cicero, I could count on not getting to spend any time with Babette afterwards—and very likely, earning myself a cold shoulder or angry words.

What was even worse was that I had no idea how much of it was intentional on Cicero's part. Even before he had started exploiting me for free labor, I had seen him sometimes burst into tears for no good reason, talking to himself in the halls of Sanctuary, and raving at people long dead. Whenever he got like that the others would avoid him for hours, except for Hecate, who would try her best to calm him down at such times. She couldn't always be there, though; as the Listener, she had other responsibilities that sometimes took her out of Sanctuary, or just kept her busy inside it.

Cicero had been having more good days since the new year began, and I had decided that I had to help keep him calm too. Hecate looked so upset whenever Cicero was having one of his fits or whatever they were, and seeing Hecate upset made me upset too. I wanted to spare her pain as much as I could. And I liked Cicero; he was funny and a good fighter.

And he clearly loved Hecate.

That last one was a point in his favor… but for some reason whenever I thought about it, it almost seemed like a problem. I knew that he loved Hecate, and I understood why. She was so amazing that it was easy to love her. I just didn't understand why she loved Cicero so much. He was unreliable, pushy, loud, and quite insane. He had a lot of good qualities—as a brother in arms, and as a sibling in the Dark Brotherhood. I also didn't understand why, since they loved each other, that they weren't married. Hecate had seemed almost horrified at the idea. Did that mean their relationship wasn't as close as I thought it was?

I was so distracted thinking about Cicero and Hecate that I didn't see the corpse until I tripped over it.

When I fell, I thought it was just another root, albeit a larger one than before. I started to curse my luck before I realized that whatever I had tripped on was too soft to be a root. As I pulled myself up into a crouch, my eyes adjusted to the shadows enough to make out a body-shaped lump. I scrabbled away from it on all fours, barely remembering to pull the flanged mace I kept on my belt whenever I left Sanctuary. After the incident with the frostbite spider, I didn't go unarmed outside my home anymore.

After confirming with a few indelicate taps that the person on the ground was indeed dead and not coming after me anytime soon, I gingerly crawled closer and flipped the body over without touching it. The corpse was that of a middle-aged man dressed in heavy hides and furs, his face unshaven and his hair long and greasy. A few feet away from the body was a rusty-looking iron sword; it looked like he had dropped it while struggling with an attacker. His eyes were wide open, staring sightlessly in death, and his mouth was full of dirt and leaves from being dropped face-down onto the ground.

The worst thing was the throat wound. It looked like his throat had been torn out by a vicious animal bite. I knew enough about weapons at this point to realize that no blade or club had inflicted that wound; only teeth could have opened the side of his neck and crushed the windpipe at the same time. Whatever it was that killed this man had done it with a savage power that looked like it had also snapped his spine in addition to ripping his throat apart. Something about the site bothered me, but I couldn't quite place it.

With a savage burst of intuition, it came to me. My fear of blood hadn't been triggered by looking at the wound. Ever since killing Rolff Stone-Fist, blood had bothered me a lot—to the point where I would only use blunt weapons. Nazir had begun refurbishing Sanctuary's torture room in preparation for some sort of special training to remove my squeamishness, but that wouldn't be ready for another month. In the meantime, the idea of blood still bothered me.

The body hadn't frightened me when I examined it because there was no blood. A few drying smears clung to the dead man's armor, but the wound itself had only a few clots sticking to its ragged edges. The man's throat had been laid open by a savage attack, but there was almost no blood on his clothes, none on the ground around him, none on the leaves nearby—none at all.

Where was all the blood?

I knew that I still had a lot to learn about tracking and woodland survival, but I was still pretty sure that I wasn't incompetent enough to miss pints and pints of spilled blood from a gaping neck wound. I decided to risk some light and pulled out my flint and tinder to light a small fire. Once it was going well enough that I could light anything from it, I checked the dead man more thoroughly. Months in close proximity to the Night Mother had killed the last of my nervousness around bodies, so searching him was just a task like any other.

The man's inventory of worldly possessions was woefully small. He had a rusty iron knife, a half-eaten apple, and a pouch with less than a dozen grimy septims. The coins I kept; no sense letting good money go to waste. Judging from the man's general dishevelment and weaponry, I figured he had to be a bandit. No great loss there.

He also had a torch crushed into the ground under him and a sooty mark on his chest from where his weight had smothered it out before it could burn him. He must have been carrying it when he was assaulted and his body fell into it. I lit it off the small fire, then stomped the fire out. The torch would be useful in looking around for signs of whatever had done this. Maybe it was the snipe I was hunting, though I wasn't sure that Cicero would send me out after a truly dangerous animal.

I didn't manage to find any blood or a snipe, but I did see something that chilled my own blood. My heart froze into a solid lump of ice when my eyes happened upon a familiar shape in the bushes about a dozen feet away. I prayed to the Divines I was wrong as I walked closer and brought the torch down and confirmed my worst fears.

There, pushed in among the brush, was Babette's flower basket.

My mind raced as I tried to figure out what it was doing out here, shoved into the bushes less than a stone's throw from a dead man. Judging from the way the leaves had been trampled, there had clearly been a struggle here. The basket was pushed deeply into the underbrush; I had only seen it by a chance reflection from the torchlight. All at once, the answer came to me. I felt stupid for not realizing it immediately.

Babette must have followed me out here and been kidnapped by bandits! Damn it all to the Void! I hadn't bothered asking her along this time because I didn't think she would enjoy hunting, so naturally she would have followed me out to be contrary. Had Pavot managed to overpower one of her attackers? I wasn't sure how much damage a half-grown ice wolf could do to a man, but that still wouldn't explain the missing blood.

The blood was a mystery that would have to wait until later, I told myself. So was the mysterious snipe, for that matter. For the time being, I had to employ every ounce of woodcraft and forestry at my disposal to track the fiends that had kidnapped my best friend and somehow rescue her from their clutches before… something bad happened. I also wasn't sure what a bunch of bandits would do with a twelve-year-old girl, but it had to be something nefarious!

I made a mental note to thank Cicero later for teaching me the word "nefarious."

Searching the ground around the corpse closely, I was able to make out a faint set of tracks in the soft earth. After determining that they were mine, I expanded my search a little more widely. It took longer than I was really comfortable with to find shoe marks that were clearly not mine. They seemed a little small for a powerful, armored bandit, but I could only guess that their owner was light on his feet. Steeling my nerve and extinguishing the torch to avoid notice, I rejoined the shadows and moved through the forest.

I was on the hunt.

* * *

It had been around an hour of tracking, by my loose estimation, when I nearly stumbled into the bandits' camp. I was so occupied with following the tracks, which had become more numerous and clear as I traveled, that I managed to miss the sounds of men talking until I was almost on top of them. I dropped into a crouch and crept closer, finally seeing the light from a campfire up ahead through the trees. I breathed a sigh of relief; a campfire made it strictly amateur hour.

One of the things that Meena had taught me about stealth was the importance of not spoiling your night vision. A campfire might make you feel safer on a dark night, but it made you a clear target for anyone out in that darkness and ruined your ability to see them sneaking up on you. It made it pretty easy to see anyone within the circle of your firelight, and basically impossible to see anyone outside it.

The bandits numbered half a dozen rough-looking men and women wearing armor in varying degrees of disrepair and carrying a motley assortment of weapons. A single patched tent was set up against a low outcropping of stones. The campfire was about ten feet from the tent and surrounded by rumpled bedrolls, while a pot of bubbling stew hung over the fire from a metal spit. A butchered deer carcass was strung up in a nearby tree attesting to the origin of the meat. Nazir would have been so disappointed; you never stewed deer meat unless you had fresh garlic to go with the venison.

Maybe I spent too much time with Nazir, the more I thought about it.

Sitting among the lounging bandits, holding a bowl of stew and looking utterly terrified at her new companions, was Babette. She was wearing a torn dress and her hair was uncharacteristically matted with dirt. Her face was filthy, except for the tracks cut into the muck by her tears. She looked unhurt but more scared than I had ever seen her before. At least they hadn't gotten around to doing anything "nefarious" yet.

Four of the bandits were just sitting around the campfire, telling dirty jokes and laughing it up, a fifth was passed out inside the tent with a jug near his hand, while the last lazily patrolled the edge of the firelight to keep an eye on the area. He chewed a chunk of dry-looking bread as he walked, and his unfocused gaze made me confident that I could walk right through his field of vision without him seeing me at all. Honestly, given how disorganized this lot looked, I was surprised they were keeping a watch at all.

I put together a basic plan. Given my own poor planning ability and Nazir's commentary about plans rarely surviving contact with the enemy, I kept it simple. I would wait until all but one of the bandits went to sleep, arrange a distraction for the last one, then sneak into camp and sneak back out with Babette. They wouldn't even know I had been there until they woke up and found their hostage gone. Once the two of us were back in Sanctuary, I would report it all to Nazir, and the others would punish the bandits for setting up shop so close to the home of the Dark Brotherhood. I considered just killing them all in their sleep, but I wasn't confident that I could manage to kill five adults silently while still getting Babette out safely—and Babette was my priority.

Fortunately for me, I considered patience a virtue, so I wasn't particularly bored as I waited for the bandits to finish their repast and bed down for the night. In fact, I felt fairly excited; watching people from the shadows was a crucial element of my training, and I was doing it successfully under field conditions. It was an empowering sensation. Finally, after they had passed around what felt like their tenth bottle of cheap booze and run through the same off-key drinking songs as often, they started yawning and drifting to their bedrolls.

One of the women took the uneaten bowl of stew from Babette and dumped it back in the pot, which now hung over glowing coals. She dragged the poor girl to the nearby tent… and then came back out a few moments later, leaving Babette alone in the tent. I was a bit confused, but it would work to my advantage. Since the tent was pressed up against a rock outcropping, I could scale the rocks from the other side, drop into the camp, and enter the tent through the rear. Also to my surprise, the lone bandit showing any amount of preparation just crawled into his bedroll like the rest of his companions. They didn't even leave a guard on duty while they slept.

This was going to be easier than I thought.

Once the bandits were snoring, I crept around the side of the outcropping and hauled myself up its broad flank. I took my time ascending the gentle slope since it didn't seem like Babette was in any imminent danger. Better to be cautious if I had the time for it. Once I was at the apex of the pile of stones, I flattened myself and crept forward on my belly to take a look into the camp. Everyone was still sleeping so I slowly reversed my body and began to let my legs over the edge. Suspended by my hands, my feet were still six inches or so above the ground when I let go, so I was worried that the noise of my landing might wake one of them up. Fortunately, my body was completely concealed by the tent; I didn't hear even the slightest grunt to indicate someone had noticed me.

Taking out my hunting knife—I might not have liked edged weapons much, but they were useful for more than killing—I slit the rear of the tent open and let myself in. I put the knife away so I wouldn't scare Babette and crept toward the bedroll at the center of the tent. The interior was pitch black, so I moved even more slowly and carefully than usual.

It was only luck that I didn't scream when someone grabbed me from behind. Luck, and the powerful hand that was slapped over my mouth.

I grunted in surprise and started to move to try the hand-to-hand maneuvers Cicero had taught me to throw off a grappling opponent when a knife touched the side of my neck. I immediately stopped struggling and went limp. Whoever it was, they had me dead to rights. I had miscalculated the skill of these bandits and it was going to cost my life.

"Aren't you a little short for a bandit?" Babette's girlish voice whispered in my ear. I felt my eyes widen in shock and the knife dropped away from my throat. I turned to the direction of the attack, ready to defend myself in case it was some sort of trick. I could barely make Babette's face out in the darkness, but I could see her well enough to know that the expression on her face was one of annoyance rather than gratitude.

"Babette!" I exclaimed in an excited whisper. "You're okay!" She shushed at me with the hand that wasn't holding the knife. I dropped my voice further. "I came here to rescue you."

"I don't need any recuing," she hissed at me. "How did you even know I was here?"

"I found your basket in the woods near a dead guy," I responded. "It looked like he'd had his throat torn out, so I thought you might be in trouble." I paused a moment. "How did that guy die anyway?"

"You say his throat was torn out?" she said, asking a question in response to my question. "Maybe… Maybe a vampire killed him."

"A vampire?" I asked. "Aren't vampires evil?"

"And assassins aren't?" she snapped.

"I suppose you have a point," I conceded. "I guess you're lucky you weren't around when that guy got killed. It still doesn't explain how you wound up out here." Babette sighed, exasperated.

"I was out gathering herbs for potions when the bandits found me," she explained. "I pretended that I was lost in the forest and that my parents would give them a big reward for finding me. They were going to keep me overnight before sending a ransom note. Not that any of them would ever have woken up to do it."

"You were going to kill them after they took you in?" I asked, more shocked at her duplicity than the idea of murder. She snorted at my naivety.

"Divines above, Aventus! They're bandits! They weren't helping me out of the goodness of their heart. They were going to hold me for ransom." She paused a moment. "Honestly, I'd be surprised if they weren't planning on taking the ransom money and then selling me to a slaver anyway."

"You sound like you don't like them very much," I offered.

"I don't know them," she sniffed, "just their kind. This isn't the first encampment of bandits I've wiped out." I occasionally managed to forget that Babette had been in the Dark Brotherhood longer than I had. Her cold tone was a chilling reminder that she had killed more men than I had.

"Sorry…" I said it even though I wasn't really sorry at all. "I was just out hunting snipe for Cicero when I saw your basket, and I thought you might need help." Babette's face scrunched up strangely, and she clapped a hand over her mouth. It took me a minute to realize she was laughing. "What's so funny?"

"You were…" Before she could finish the sentence, a snort of laughter escaped her. She slapped her hand over her mouth again as fast as she could, but both of us turned toward the tent flap when we heard one of the bandits' lazy snores turn into a confused sound of wakefulness. We looked at each other wide-eyed and scrambled for the hole I had cut in the tent, rushing outside and quickly scaling the rocky outcropping behind it.

By the time we had reached the other side of the stone outcropping, I could hear the bandit shouting the rest of the camp awake. Babette and I poured on the speed, running into the dark forest as fast as our feet could take us. She took the lead, grabbing my hand and pulling me along behind her. She never seemed to trip on a root, run into a branch, or even stumble in the dark. I was hard-pressed to keep up with her as she virtually flew through the forest. After a double-handful of minutes passed without me being able to hear any sounds of pursuit, I let go of her hand and slumped up against a nearby tree to catch my breath. Babette didn't seem winded in the slightest.

"By Sithis!" I swore once I could get a word out. "I didn't know you could run that fast!"

"I wouldn't have had to if you hadn't shown up and ruined my hunt!" she snapped.

"I thought you were in trouble," I snapped back, feeling my temper rise and my face burn with embarrassment. "Besides, you were the one who laughed and woke them up. What did I say that was so damned funny?"

"Cicero sent you on a snipe hunt," she said, as though that explained everything. At my uncomprehending look, she sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose with finger and thumb, as though she had a headache. "Aventus, a 'snipe hunt' is a prank that older people play on younger people. It means a search for something that isn't real. Cicero played you for a fool. Again."

I gaped at her, not wanting to believe what she said. Why would Cicero send me on a pointless errand? Then I realized that if this errand had been fake, what about all of the others he had sent me on?

"Why would he…" I began lamely.

"Who knows?" she interrupted. "Maybe he's just insane and taking it out on you. Maybe it's 'training' in his demented mind. Maybe he just wants you out of Sanctuary because Hecate is embarrassed about having sex with him while you're home." She paused a moment before muttering, "I wish she had that same courtesy for the rest of us."

"Sex?" I asked. "Like making babies?"

"Oh gods," Babette exclaimed, "don't tell me your mother never had the talk with you."

"She didn't really get a chance to talk to me about that sort of stuff," I said softly, looking down at my feet. She had died before we got a chance to talk about any of the really important things, and I could only suppose that this was one of them. Babette laid a hand on my shoulder, and when I looked up her face was softer.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't mean to bring up your mother."

"It's okay," I lied. "It doesn't hurt as much anymore. I just can't believe Cicero would lie to me like that."

"He's unreliable and overly fond of bad joke," Babette said sympathetically. "I told you he was playing you for a fool. Maybe next time you'll listen to me."

I nodded, feeling my shame curdling up in my belly as she took my arm and began to lead me back to Sanctuary. Cicero couldn't be trusted. It was a hard thing to admit considering how much I liked him, but Babette had just shown me how badly I had been misled. What bothered me more was the idea that if he could be so duplicitous with me, maybe he was also misleading Hecate in some way. Maybe her love for the jester was based on false pretenses. Maybe…

But there was no more to the thought than that.

Babette and I walked back to Sanctuary arm in arm, enjoying the cool spring night with the full moons riding low in the sky. All the way back, I mused about how none of my new family were quite what they seemed to be. My anger at Cicero festered the whole way home, but something new was joining it, a sensation I didn't have a name for. I felt the need to become an adult, to learn all the secrets that adults kept from children. I wanted to go on my first contract, to be big and strong, to not be the "new kid" that got sent on snipe hunts.

As we emerged from the forest onto the shoreline that ran alongside Sanctuary, silver moonlight spilled onto the waves. Babette's eyes sparkled in the cold light, and her pale skin seemed to shimmer with the reflected light of the sea. I could almost see how pretty she would become when she grew up. She leaned up against me as we walked; I didn't blame her for wanting to be close, considering how cold she felt. It was springtime in Skyrim, but it was still chilly, especially so close to the sea.

The Black Door loomed before us and I thought about the course of my life since joining the Brotherhood. The spring was well on its way to summer, but the seasons couldn't turn quickly enough for me. Spring was a time for children—and neither Babette nor I were really children, not inside where it mattered. It just hurt waiting for my body to catch up to the things I knew I was capable of.

"What is life's greatest illusion?" the Black Door rasped.

"Innocence, my brother," I responded.

Time couldn't pass fast enough for me. I wondered if Babette felt the same way.

* * *

_…to be continued…_


	12. Chapter 12: What About Babette?

**Chapter 12: What About Babette?**

I had known for some time that Babette wasn't like other girls. Most girls our age weren't highly-trained killers, professionally skilled alchemists, or the proud owners of a monstrous pet, for example. It went beyond all that, though. From the moment I met Babette, I had sensed something odd about her. At first, I just thought that she was trying too hard to be grown-up; eventually, I began to think she wasn't trying too hard, just that she didn't understand how to be a child.

I knew the feeling.

Even beyond all of that, there was a strangeness to her that I couldn't fully articulate. Since I didn't understand people that well to begin with, it was hard to quantify what it was about Babette that was stranger than any other person I knew. It was also hard to compare to the people around us, since the remainder of our family consisted of a mad jester, a crazed Khajiit, a sarcastic Redguard, and the Dragonborn. I'm not sure I even knew anyone who might count as "normal."

As the cool Skyrim spring had bled into the warm days of summer, I frequently went out fishing with Hecate. This normally consisted of me piloting the small rowboat that Nazir had built for me and casting my line to catch fish for dinner while Hecate sat at the far end of the boat reading a book. I was usually content to just be near her, occasionally trading brief anecdotes about my training in exchange for her carefully parceled-out praise. One day near the end of Mid Year, though, my curiosity got the better of me.

"Babette isn't like other girls, is she?" I asked, blurting out the question without the slightest bit of lead-in. I hated my inability to communicate effectively, especially with the people that mattered the most to me, but the words never seemed to come out of my mouth in the same shape they had in my head. Fortunately, Hecate was always patient with me. At my question, she folded away her book and looked up at me very seriously.

"She is an assassin, dear," she said kindly, and clearly avoiding the question.

"No, not that," I insisted. I knew I shouldn't be pressing my luck, but it was usually easier to get a clear answer out of Hecate than from any of the others. Even practical Nazir was too fond of making his training cryptic. "I mean in other ways. Like how she sleeps every day, and the way she talks sometimes. She doesn't talk like other kids I knew back home." I did some quick mental calculations based on when Hecate first met me and the time of the burning of Falkreath Sanctuary. "And how long has Babette been in the Brotherhood anyway? She's told me stories about her contracts and there are lots of them. How did she get so good with potions?" Hecate cut off my avalanche of questions by picking her book back up and shoving her nose into it.

"You'll have to ask her that," she replied around the paper wall.

"But it's rude to ask siblings about themselves," I reminded her. "Remember how mad you got when Meena told me to ask you and Cicero about making the beast with two backs." I paused; the whole idea of summoning some kind of double-backed monster was just confusing. Was it some sort of Brotherhood ritual only the Listener and Keeper could perform? "I still don't know what that means, but you sure were mad about it."

Hecate sighed and pulled her book up further to cover her eyes. I could tell I had pushed my luck too far and that I wouldn't get anything out of her that day. To try and apologize for pressing her for information, I offered to let her off on one of the rocky islets near my fishing spots. I knew she liked sunbathing, and that coming out fishing with me was mostly out of a sense of responsibility, so letting her out of the boat for a while was a way for me show her I could be responsible for myself.

"If you need anything," she said as she disembarked, "you give me a shout." I nodded soberly before pushing back off, but I couldn't help taking a parting shot as I went.

"I wish Babette could come along at least once," I grumbled as I rowed away. I wasn't surprised that Hecate chose to not respond to my grousing. I spent the rest of the day thinking about Babette and how strange she was. Given that I had spent most of my recent days thinking about Hecate and the unusual feelings she inspired in the lower half of my body, it was a welcome change.

* * *

The moment that my suspicion about Babette crystallized into certainty was a few weeks later, on the first day of Sun's Height.

Hecate had been suddenly called away from breakfast by a voice no one else could hear. Her hurried departure from the table left the rest of us staring at her retreating back over our food before quietly resuming. It had happened a few times before, and we all knew what it meant. The Listener had been called by the Night Mother.

As I slowly ate, I wondered if this would wind up being the contract that was my first. Nazir still kept his ear to the ground for potential work for the family, but the Night Mother was the source of our holiest missions. She was our link to Sithis, the Dread Father, who dwelled beyond the world in the eternal Void. She heard the calls of the vengeful, those people who performed the blasphemous and forbidden ritual called the Black Sacrament.

People like me.

I had called on the Night Mother to kill Grelod the Kind, the monster who ran the Honorhall Orphanage in Riften. It had been none other than Hecate herself who had fulfilled that contract and ended Grelod's life, giving me peace and closure that I otherwise could never have obtained. That moment had defined my life ever since, and nothing made me more proud than to be one of the Night Mother's brood, an assassin of the Dark Brotherhood, sworn to dispense judgment on the unworthy.

The only problem was that after almost nine months in the family, I had yet to get my first contract. I had killed Rolff Stone-Fist to prove my worthiness, and I had slain a woman whose name I never knew to overcome my last remaining doubts, but the Night Mother had yet to see fit to call upon me to fulfill my duties. Nazir still thought that I needed more training before going into the field, but in my heart I knew I was ready to begin dispensing justice. Still, Nazir's concern was a practical one, based on his lifetime of experience in the Dark Brotherhood. I disagreed with him, but we both concurred that my field experience would have to begin soon. There was only so much I could learn in Sanctuary, after all.

My bigger concern was Hecate. I worried occasionally that she would keep holding me back from my calling out of some sort of misguided attempt to preserve my youth and innocence, the former of which I didn't want and the latter of which I don't believe I ever possessed. She still saw me as a child instead of a young man, and I feared that it would keep her from letting me go on contracts, even when one might be available for me. If I had wanted to wait to grow up or play it safe, I would have gone back to Honorhall and stayed there until I was sixteen.

Still, they said that the Dread Father rewards patience, so I did my best to not get pushy about it. Every passing day made me more aware of how I was being passed over for missions, though—especially when I thought about how many Babette had seemed to have been on. She wasn't that much older than me, so why did she seem to have so many more stories about kills?

As I finished the last few mouthfuls of my oatmeal, Hecate came striding back into the main room, Cicero in her wake and Babette dragging herself sleepily out of her room. I nearly dropped my spoon in shock; whatever was going on, it had to be pretty important if Hecate had rousted Babette out of bed so soon after she had crawled into it.

"Brothers and sisters," she began as she walked down the stairs to the common room, "the Night Mother has summoned us again." I loved Hecate more than words could say, but occasionally she had a habit of stating the obvious. Meena, Nazir and I were silent, waiting for her to explain before asking any questions. Babette staggered up to the table and sat down next to me, resting her head on her folded arms. Even Cicero seemed pensive as he sat down on the edge of a chair, seeming to sense that this announcement must be different if Hecate saw fit to gather everyone together for it. Would this be the day I got my first contract?

"I must go to the Imperial City for a special contract," she said once we were all sitting together. We all looked at each other in surprise; Hecate had a lot of work as the Listener, but she rarely went out on mission anymore—and never so far away. We were even more shocked at her next words. "Nazir, I wish for you to accompany me."

Cicero sprang to his feet in a flash as though he were a jack in the box.

"Why not loyal Cicero?" he whined, half-reaching toward Hecate. "Hecate always takes Cicero!"

"There's no way we can get down there and back for you to take care of Mother," she said in a far colder voice than I had ever heard her address Cicero with before. "Your duties as Keeper must come first, brother." Cicero's hurt look made my heart surge viciously. It took everything in me to keep the smile from my face, so I spooned another scoop of cold oatmeal into my mouth to cover it. Because of the food in my mouth, I nearly choked when she said, "Babette is in charge while I'm gone."

"What?" I screamed in shock, the spoon dropping out of my mouth and back into the wooden bowl with a wet plonk. I looked over at Babette in disbelief. She didn't look sleepy anymore; instead, she was sitting up and flicking her eyes between Hecate and me. "Why Babette? That doesn't even make sense! She's just a kid like me!" I turned and met Babette's gaze, feeling my pride and anger boil up inside me.

"I don't have to explain myself to you, Aretino!" Hecate snapped. I sat down in utter shock. Hecate had never yelled at me before, and she had certainly never called me by my last name. What had the Night Mother said to her to make her abandon Cicero and be angry at me? Her face softened incrementally as she looked back at Babette. "I'm sure none of you will make it difficult for our sister while I'm gone." As she looked around at the rest of the table, her face went stony again. We all nodded numbly; judging from the others' looks, they were in as much shock as I was.

"Are we leaving right away, Listener?" Nazir asked formally. Hecate nodded.

"Pack your things," she commanded. "We ride out immediately."

The two of them left the main hall together, discussing technical details of their journey as they went. Cicero trailed along behind them, looking like a whipped dog following its master. Meena hissed in disgust at the display and stalked away from the table, leaving me alone with Babette. I turned to look at her distrustfully, my eyes narrowing as I thought of what to say.

"No questions," she said, cutting off my train of thought. "I'm going to get some sleep."

"I don't understand why she put you in charge," I said to her retreating back, careful to not make it a question.

"The wonderful thing about being in charge," she said as she ascended the stairs, "is not having to explain yourself to anyone."

I wasn't sure if she was talking about herself or Hecate, and by the time I gathered my wits enough to make the distinction, she was already gone.

* * *

Despite her assertions that she wanted to sleep, Babette stayed awake long enough to see Nazir and Hecate off. The mood was one of somber farewell; the Listener and the Speaker leaving together on a dangerous mission was nothing to be happy about, even if it was the direct order of the Night Mother. Once the two of them had departed, Babette stumbled back to her bedroom and crawled under the blankets without a word to me.

I stayed up the rest of the day, putting in double my usual practice time with Cicero. With Hecate out of Sanctuary Cicero was more nervous and fluttery, more like he had been before his illness at the beginning of the year, but strangely enough, I found that it was easier to get along with him. We ran through the practice stances for almost two hours, and I might have gone longer if Meena had been around to switch off with Cicero. Instead, the Khajiit had apparently left Sanctuary too, probably to go off looking for trouble in Dawnstar. She would come back when she was good and ready, I supposed.

As Cicero and I sparred, both of us stripped to the waist, I couldn't help but compare us physically. The jester was in amazingly good shape for his age, trim and lithely muscular with only the slightest hint of a belly. After nine months in the Dark Brotherhood, thanks to Nazir's good cooking and my constant training, I had begun to fill out remarkably well. I wasn't the short, scrawny orphan I had been when I came to Dawnstar anymore. I had grown almost three inches and filled out to a respectable weight. I had just started my growth spurt too; Nazir and Hecate had both commented that I might wind up almost as tall as a Nord.

Now, comparing myself to the Keeper, I thought that I might even be stronger than he was. Every time he flicked his wooden dowel under my defense and gleefully declared "Dead!" reminded me that I still wasn't faster, though. He had decades of experience that I lacked. Which was one of the reasons Hecate loved him so much, I was sure. My resentment drove me to fight harder when we sparred, but I had yet to ever land a blow on Cicero in one of our matches. At least I was making him work harder for his victories.

My muscles weren't the only thing that had improved in my time with the Brotherhood; my mind had developed too. Because of Meena's lessons in stealth and infiltration, I was far better at noticing little details that I would have overlooked before. Whenever we had taken meals together lately, I kept a close eye on Babette. What had been a suspicion weeks before had turned into a near-certainty once I really started looking for it.

Babette didn't eat. At the very least, she never ate when I was around, and we spent a fair amount of time together. Some nights, she would join us for dinner but she would never eat anything—just move the food around on her plate and finally throw her napkin over the uneaten meal before taking her dishes back to the kitchen. I had caught Nazir glaring at her over dinner a few times, and now I was sure that it was out of annoyance for wasting food.

That night, we all ate together in the main hall, feasting on reheated food that Nazir had prepared before he left and stuck in the cold chamber of the kitchen. As was my habit, I kept an eye on Babette; while she sat with us for the meal, she didn't even take the pretense of eating anything. I wondered if she had just forgotten to keep up the act because she hadn't slept much. Finally, I couldn't keep it to myself anymore.

"Aren't you hungry?" I asked her while Cicero and Meena chatted together at the other end of the table. "You didn't get anything to eat." She looked down at the table dumbly then back at me with bleary eyes.

"Just not hungry," she said, stifling a yawn with one hand. "I'll get something later."

"Really?" I asked. Normally I wouldn't have been so pushy about it, but Hecate putting her in charge had set my teeth on edge. "I could go and get you something from the kitchen. I really don't mind." I half-stood like I was going to go, and Babette quickly snaked out her hand to grab my arm. She was shockingly strong.

"No!" she insisted. "I can take care of myself. Hecate even trusts me to run Sanctuary while she's gone. I don't need you pushing food down my throat." She let go of my forearm and I rubbed the place she had grabbed.

"Strong grip," I commented, and let it drop as I gathered the dirty dishes to take them away. I could feel Babette glaring at my back as I walked off, and I pretended to not care. If she was going to hide things from me, then I didn't owe her any explanations either.

My guilt over thinking she was a liar was over and done with. Babette _was_ lying to me about something. I just needed to figure out what it was. I had some suspicions, but I wasn't sure whether or not to confront her about them yet. With Hecate and Nazir gone, it was the perfect time to talk to Babette without interference. On the other hand, if Babette got angry about it, there was no one to tell her no. There was another concern too, maybe an even bigger one.

I didn't want to change the way things were with Babette.

In almost every other part of my life, I couldn't wait for things to happen. I wanted to finish growing up, get my first contract, show up Cicero, make Hecate see me as a grown man—all as fast as possible. But when it came to Babette, I couldn't bear the thought of changing things between us. That was why I resented her being in charge so much. It wasn't just that she was my age—in fact, I realized with a horrible shock, if my suspicions were correct then she might be much older than me—but that her being in charge made us not equals anymore.

I also didn't like people lying to me. It felt too much like being treated like a child. And if Babette was going to treat me like a child, then I just didn't want to be around her.

And that was pretty much the way things went for a week, until the food Nazir had left behind for us ran out. After that, things were much worse.

* * *

"I'm hungry," I complained in my whiniest voice. "When is dinner?"

Babette sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose with her fingers. She put down the papers she had been looking over and glared at me. It might have been frightening coming from an adult, but Babette's face was too pinched up in annoyance to be truly scary. I had been harassing her about food and food-related topic for a week, and her usual cool disdain was starting to wear thin.

"Heat something up!" she snapped, nearly knocking the papers off the table with a frustrated swipe of her hand.

"There's nothing left from the stuff Nazir made before he left," I snapped back. Her eyes seemed to flare in the glow from the lanterns, and this time I was too observant to play it off as a trick of the light. I was getting closer to the truth every time Babette's control slipped.

"Surely you can manage to put a piece of meat between two pieces of bread, dear brother," she hissed as formally as she could manage. It's kind of funny how "dear brother" sounded an awful lot like "you little shit" when she said it that way. I felt my back stiffen up in response to her condescension, and it might have turned into a real shouting match if Cicero hadn't picked that moment to come wandering back in.

The jester was filthy, covered head to toe in dust and grime. Ever since Hecate had left, his new hobby had been exploring forgotten sections of the tunnels leading into and out of Dawnstar Sanctuary. It was yet another thing for me to be irritated about, since Hecate had made it expressly clear she didn't want me to go past the barricades that led into the natural caverns beyond the inhabited areas. Cicero apparently didn't feel any such compunction, and it had become common for him to come dragging into the main hall just before dinner covered in different kinds of dirt and muck. Once, he had shown up wearing only his smallclothes and soaking wet, babbling about a lost underground kingdom and a mile-high waterfall.

I never got to do anything interesting.

I was so busy glaring at Babette that I barely noticed Cicero's entrance, except to stop fighting with her. Even with my occasional resentment of Cicero, I was trying very hard to stick to my promise to not send him into a fit or a spell or whatever they were. Despite everything, I still cared about the damned fool; more than that, though, with Hecate gone I had no idea how we would calm him down again if he went off the deep end.

Being annoyed with Babette and trying to not let it spill over to Cicero had me so distracted that I didn't see that he was holding one hand behind his back until he whipped it around and thrust a venomous tunnel snake into my face.

"Look what Cicero found!" he said in a gleefully singsong voice. I went sprawling away from him, knocking my chair out from under me as he waggled the deadly serpent in my face.

"By Sithis, Cicero!" I screamed. I couldn't stand how shrill my own voice sounded, but I was genuinely terrified. "What the hell are you thinking?"

"Language!" Babette scolded without looking up from the papers. I looked over at her incredulously and tripped over the chair I had pushed away. She was seriously going to worry about my language when Cicero was threatening me with a viper? She continued primly, "Aventus, you should not use such crude dialogue."

"Cicero has a gods-damned snake, and I'm the one being yelled at?" I shouted at her, unable to keep my frustration inside any longer. Cicero giggled and danced toward me with the snake held out. I jumped back, scrabbling on my hands and feet to get away from the animal. I couldn't help but throw another verbal jab, even while I was being harassed with a poisonous creature. "Besides, Hecate said I could say whatever I damned well pleased!"

After Babette had scolded me about my language after New Life Day, I had made it a point to ask the Listener what her boundaries were about that sort of thing. To my surprise, she didn't seem to care at all. Divines knew Hecate could curse like a sailor when she put her mind to it.

"The Listener is not here!" she offered imperiously. I had wondered how long it would take her to pull rank about something important. Apparently, the answer was "about a week." She stood up from the table and stalked toward me, her hands tightened into small fists. "I am here, and I am in charge. And I say you may not talk that way!" She stopped, standing over me and visibly forced herself to calm down. Her voice was softer when she continued, but still firm and demanding. "If you wish, you may resume when the Listener returns. In the meantime, you are to have a civil tongue."

Cicero tittered again, though whether at his new prized pet or my predicament I wasn't sure. The noise drew Babette's attention and she wheeled on him like she was a striking serpent herself.

"As for you, Keeper," she said low and angrily, "that is not appropriate for the dining area. Please dispose of it immediately."

Cicero shrugged as though it meant nothing to him either way, then tossed the wriggling snake casually over one shoulder. I prepared myself to jump up and run from the thing if it came my way again, but the snake suddenly dropped into two bloody pieces. Between the falling chunks of snake strode in Meena, blood gleaming wetly on her claws. I hadn't even seen the strike that separated the serpent.

"What is there to eat?" she asked, sniffing the air and licking snake blood off of her paw. "Meena does not smell anything good."

Babette's hand jerked up spasmodically and she slapped herself in the forehead as though to knock the anger out of her skull. I couldn't help but smile at her expression of total frustration.

"All of you are more than capable of making something to eat on your own. You are more than welcome to help yourselves," she growled as she stalked back to the table and shuffled through the papers. "I think I finally figured out Nazir's code at least. I will give out contracts after you three eat."

My heart surged. Contracts! I would finally get to exercise my blade! Before I could get too excited, Meena sat at the table and leaned forward, resting her chin on one paw as she looked at Babette. Her tail swished back and forth dangerously as she spoke.

"Contracts?" she purred with an amused voice. "And who does the little one think is going to go out?"

"Are you suggesting that you would disobey a direct order from a superior, Khajiit?" Babette snarled back.

I didn't like the monster that power had seemed to bring out in my friend. She had always had a sort of cruel streak, but I just chalked it up to being an assassin. The way she had been acting since Hecate and Nazir left was nothing short of vicious. I hadn't been making it as easy for her as I could have, maybe—but I was fed up with her lies, and I didn't like the feeling of being pushed around.

"Never," Meena replied innocently, holding her paws wide as though to deflect Babette's anger. "Meena loves contracts!" She leaned in suddenly, like a cat going in for the kill. "But who else is going?"

Babette paused, the anger running off her face like water from a mountain stream. Hecate had made it very clear that she was responsible for the rest of us, so I couldn't imagine her giving that up by taking a contract herself.

"Cicero can take a few contracts," she finally responded. "His blade is still active."

"Oh, no!" Cicero interjected sadly. "Oh my, no! Loyal Cicero may only go on contract with lovely, dear Hecate. The Listener said that Cicero could only kill with her." Babette rubbed the bridge of her nose again; it looked like her headache was getting worse.

"Fine, then! Aventus can finally take a contract!" she shouted with a contemptuous gesture my way.

"But the Listener said I had to wait until she said I was ready," I pointed out. Even as I said it, I wondered what in the name of Sithis I was doing. I didn't want anything more than taking a contract, and I was refusing one when it was basically thrown in my lap? My traitor mouth just kept working against me, though. "She said I had to have backup too, at least for my first one. And then depending on how well I do, I might be able to go out alone."

Everything I said was literally from Hecate's mouth, but I had complained about it more than once. I was ready! Why had I said all that to Babette?

"You mean to tell me that, out of all of us, only Meena can go on contract?" Babette asked with a crestfallen look. Meena nodded with a broad smile, while Cicero's answering nod was solemn and almost melancholy."Lovely…"

The look on Babette's face made me understand. I had gotten so used to being contrary that it had become second nature. She wanted me to go on contract, so that's the thing I would refuse to do. With a chagrined feeling, I realized that I had just cut off my own nose to spite my face.

"We still haven't done anything about dinner," I complained, hoping to take my mind off my stupidity by focusing on the immediate needs of my belly. "I'm hungry!"

"Cicero is hungry too!" the Keeper added. Meena yowled shrilly to accompany our clamoring. Babette's face twisted angrily as we kept up our whining, until she finally jumped up out of her chair and onto the top of the table. She stomped her tiny foot on the surface of it, scattering papers and spilling an inkwell onto the ground.

"Enough of that!" she shouted. "There is no reason the lot of you cannot act like adults!" Her Breton accent thickened in her frustration, making her words sound both extended and clipped at the end.

"I'm not an adult," I replied, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

"Well, it is time you started acting like one," she responded primly, smoothing her skirts and bringing her voice under control. "My mentor used to say, 'Remember that there is always someone out to get your blood.' It is very sound advice—and the sooner you learn that, the better off you will be, my young brother." She finally seemed to realize that she was standing on a table and hopped down, her skirts fluttering around her ankles as she touched down on the floor.

I smiled in satisfaction. She had finally let slip that she was older than me! I had been trying to get her angry enough to let more of who she really was slip through, and this just went toward confirming my suspicions. Now that I had seen her at her angriest, seen the mask slip slightly, I had almost all the information I needed.

"To show my good will," she said with false cheer, "I will treat the lot of you to dinner in Dawnstar. Do not get used to it. You better be ready tomorrow to feed yourselves."

With a flourish, she turned and walked toward the Black Door. If I had any money, I would have bet that she wouldn't be eating with us in Dawnstar. I was finally ready to confront Babette about the dark truth. I finally knew what she really was.

* * *

Sun's Height crawled into Last Seed with no sign or word from Hecate and Nazir. We dragged ourselves through the monotony of daily life without our leadership, eating cold cuts and other food that could be served without much in the way of preparation. After Babette's one show of generosity, forced as it was, the rest of us had provided for ourselves as best we could. Cicero's one attempt at cooking a meal ended in a fire, and Meena couldn't be moved to do anything for others on her best day.

Strangely enough, I think I fared well under these conditions. It was still better than living alone in Windhelm, or my time at Honorhall. I fished a lot and cooked what I caught, only delving into the sparse supplies from Dawnstar whenever I felt like adding some variety to my diet.

Cicero was keeping himself busy whenever possible, but by the end of the first month with no messages from our wayward members he was starting to suffer. I could sometimes hear him weeping in his room, and he would sometimes cancel our practice sessions abruptly with no warning. My ire at the jester for his pranks and his closeness with Hecate started to bleed away in the face of his increasing instability. I couldn't hold onto my anger when he seemed so pathetic and lost.

Meena was rarely at home over the course of the month. She was bloodthirsty and cruel, but those were good attributes for an energetic assassin—if less so for a sibling. She kept herself busy with Babette's contracts and was in a decently good mood whenever I saw her. In fact, I would say that her mood improved with every passing day that we didn't hear from Hecate and Nazir. That was worrisome. I didn't know what it meant exactly, but I had known Meena long enough to know that she was at her most dangerous when she seemed happiest.

Babette kept to her normal schedule, awake during the night and sleeping every day. If I was right about my suspicions, that made a lot more sense than it used to. We were still angry at one another, barely speaking in fact, and it was starting to become painful to me. I didn't know how she felt about it, but I couldn't stand being angry at my best friend anymore. I also couldn't stand being lied to. Both were equally unpleasant options as far as I was concerned.

I had originally hoped that Hecate could resolve our differences when she got back from her mission. The longer it took, the more worried I became that she might not come back at all—or that, even if she did, it would be too late to fix things. I had been locked into paralysis by not wanting to change things with Babette, but my own resentment and her vicious response to it was changing things on its own. It had taken a month of anger and hard feelings to make me realize it, but somewhere along the way I had finally figured out that I couldn't let things go on like this.

I loved Babette too much for us to wind up hating each other. Even if we were only adopted siblings, she was still my sister, and I would love her no matter what the truth was. Once I came to that realization, I understood how stupid it had been to be mad at her for lying about what she really was. I could understand the value in wearing a mask around people to avoid scaring them; I had done it myself, back in Windhelm. The only thing I could do to save our friendship now was the thing I feared most.

I had to let Babette know I had figured out the truth. I had to confront her.

One night, after Cicero had retreated to his room and Meena was out on contract, I found Babette at her alchemy lab. She was usually in there after dark if she wasn't going through Nazir's notes. Pavot was curled up next to her feet, his shaggy white-furred body beginning to show the signs of transition from cub to full-grown wolf. As I had predicted months before, he was starting to show definite signs of becoming pudgy. It wasn't just me or Babette that had been hurt by our arguing; Pavot hadn't been getting nearly enough exercise since I had stopped taking him out with me. That was another thing I would have to correct.

I waited in the doorway for Babette to acknowledge me, but she was still giving me the cold shoulder. I knew she was observant enough to realize I was there, so after a few minutes I cleared my throat to let her know I wasn't going anywhere. She sighed heavily and put down her mortar and pestle.

"What is it?" she asked without looking at me.

"Babette… can I talk with you?" I asked. I looked down the stone hallway toward Cicero's room and had a terrible moment where I imagined him stumbling out and interrupting at the worst possible moment. "Privately?" I added.

"Of course, my dear Aventus," she said with a tight-lipped smile as she finally turned to face me. "We can go outside."

As she put away her things and joined me at the Black Door, I wondered if I would have the courage to go through with this. Outside, the twin moons were high in the sky, bright and full. The night was warm and humid, and the air was full of the sound of the tide changing. Without thinking about it, I took the lead and walked toward the shore. When the sea was in sight, I felt Babette's hand slip into mine; her skin was cold in contrast to the warm night air. Once we had reached the high tide line, I turned to Babette and took a deep breath. Her tiny, pale face was turned up toward mine, and I suddenly realized how much taller than her I had become.

"Babette…" I began.

"Yes, Aventus?" she asked breathily.

"I know what you are!" I blurted out. Her eyes widened and she took a half-step away from me as I cursed myself for a fool. By the Divines, what was wrong with me? Why was it that every time I tried to talk to someone who was important to me, I wound up sounding like I had been dropped on my head as a baby? I sighed and tried to compose myself. I should have talked to Cicero before confronting Babette; he might have been a fool, but he had a way with words.

"What would that be, dear brother?" Babette asked, quirking up one eyebrow. At least she wasn't trying to deny it; that was a good sign as far as I was concerned.

"You never go out during the day, you don't eat, you talk funny, and your hands are always cold," I stammered, trying to buy time to collect my thoughts.

"Go on," she urged, stepping closer to me again. Her eyes glinted coldly in the moonlight and her hands tightened around mine. "Say it. Say what I am."

I steeled myself and took a deep breath, then locked eyes with her.

"You're…" I gulped heavily and calmed my nerves. "You're a construct."

"What." It wasn't precisely a question, though Babette's tone was one of disbelief. She had always claimed that I wasn't that bright, but now that I had discerned the truth, she was shocked! I pushed on through my reasoning before she could interrupt and try to cover it up again.

"You're one of those constructs from the Dwemer ruins," I continued. "I heard they have really good sentinels and they still run even though the dwarves are long dead. I figured out you must be one of those. Probably a special model, since you're a little girl instead of a spider or a sphere or something." I smiled broadly. "It explains everything, even why you sleep during the day. You're recharging!"

I waited for her to refute my flawless logic or to admit everything. I had expected any number of possible reactions. I thought she might even cry, though I was privately hoping she would be proud and happy that I had figured it all out on my own.

I certainly hadn't expected her to burst out laughing.

Babette let go of my hands and stumbled backwards, dropping to the ground as though her legs had given out. At first I thought she might be stunned or even in pain, but then she doubled up and started howling laughter, clutching her sides and rolling back and forth in the sand. She kicked her legs and tears streamed down her face as she whooped and screamed with laughter. Cicero couldn't have put on a better performance himself.

"By Sithis!" she declared when she was finally able to catch her breath. She sat up and brushed tears from her face with a grimy hand, leaving behind trails of damp sand. "You thought I was a sentinel? Aventus, have you ever even seen a Dwemer construct?"

"No," I said defensively, feeling my face beginning to turn read. "Hecate told me about them a while back. I thought she was trying to give me clues…" Babette shook her head and stood up, her face cheery and bright in the moonlight.

"I promise you that I am no construct," she said, wiping her cheek with one sleeve. "But that was sweet of you to think so."

She leaned in and kissed me on the cheek before turning and walking back toward Sanctuary, her skirts swirling around her ankles like the churning tide. I could hear her chuckling to herself as she went, leaving me standing in the wet sand like a floundering horker. I was angry again, but mostly at myself for being so stupid.

Still, I couldn't help but think that Babette could be a real bitch sometimes.

* * *

…_to be continued…_


	13. Chapter 13: Close Quarters

**Chapter 13: Close Quarters**

"Oh, sweety," Hecate said as she wrapped her arms around my shoulders. "I'm sorry."

Normally, I would have resented being called "sweety" or treated like a child, but any physical contact with Hecate was welcome—especially after she had been gone for nearly two months. I returned the hug and did my best to ignore the sensation of her breasts pressing into my cheek. I had gotten tall enough since joining the Brotherhood that my eyes were directly at chest-level for Hecate, and it made hugging her an uncomfortable experience. Not so much at the level we were touching, but somewhere below that.

After a long moment, I broke the embrace and sat down on the chair next to her table. I needed to collect my thoughts. Hecate had been sympathetic enough, and I was more grateful for her to be home than words could say, but I was still confused about my feelings for her—and for my "sister," Babette. It was all made worse by the fact that I had been so certain about my guess as to Babette's true nature, and her laughing at me had made me feel like a complete idiot.

I had wanted to talk with Hecate as soon as she had come back the previous day, but she had been occupied by relating the results of her mission and then slept in late the next morning. It was nearly lunchtime, but we had yet to eat breakfast out of deference to her and Nazir's return. Fortunately, that gave me enough time to pour out my hurt and embarrassment to Hecate; hearing her sympathy helped a lot, even if I still thought it was the sympathy she would give to a little boy and not a man.

"I just wish I knew what was up with Babette," I lamented. "I know there's something up! Don't try to deny it!" Hecate smiled and sat down on the edge of her bed. She shook her head as if to indicate that she wouldn't tell me anything, but that she couldn't disagree with my assertion. I hung my head. "I just don't know enough to know what's going on."

"She'll tell you someday," Hecate insisted, laying a gentle hand on my knee.

"But I want to know now!" I insisted, hating how whiny I sounded to myself. I didn't like feeling like I was pouting, but I couldn't help it.

"The harsh lesson of wisdom, dear heart," she said with a faint, almost pained smile. I looked into Hecate's eyes, feeling all the anger of the last couple of months boiling to the surface like blood from a wound.

"I'm tired of being treated like a little kid." She started to open her mouth to say something, but I barreled on before she could get a chance. "I've killed people," I said quietly, "several people, in fact." I tried my best to sound brave and adult. "I think… I should get a contract soon."

Hecate bit her lip in thought and was quiet a long moment.

"Do you think you're ready?" she asked tiredly. I felt like a heel, pressing her about something so selfish when she had just gotten home from a long trip, but I had concluded that no one would give me the respect I wanted without me doing something to take it. I nodded. "Then talk to Nazir and he'll set something up for you."

"Thank you!" I cried, throwing my arms around Hecate's neck in joy. "Thank you so much!" I couldn't contain myself, jumping up and down in excitement. Hecate just patted my arm and smiled her wan smile. With a sudden impulse, I kissed her on the cheek and ran off, skipping through the halls of Sanctuary.

I was so lost in thoughts of happiness that I nearly ran smack into the old orc walking out of Nazir's office. I managed to bring myself up short, but caught my feet together and went toppling toward the stone floor. The orc's hand shot out and seized my shoulder with a speed and strength that belied his grizzled, elderly appearance. With barely an effort, he hauled me back to my feet and made an elaborate show of dusting off my shoulder.

"Easy there, young one," he rumbled through a mouthful of tusks. "No need to be in such an all-fired hurry. Not like you're on a mission right now." He smiled to show that he was jesting, and I returned an uneasy smile myself. It wasn't that nonhumans made me nervous or anything; growing up in Windhelm, I had been surrounded by Dunmer and Argonians. It was just that I didn't yet know how to feel about this new—and old—brother.

"Thanks, ah… Garnag," I said, fumbling with the name slightly. I might not be uncomfortable with nonhumans themselves, but their names always gave me trouble. More than that, I had only learned this one the day before.

Garnag had apparently been part of the Dark Brotherhood years ago, long before I was even born. He had been captured while on a mission and thrown into prison. Fortunately, they had just kept him in jail for over a decade instead of executing him right way.

It still chilled me a little to think of being left to rot in jail for longer than my whole lifetime. It was something that Nazir had always said was a possibility if I got sloppy or got caught. The Brotherhood's policy had always been to not attempt rescues for lost members; there was too much risk in losing not only the captured brother or sister, but any sibling that was sent after them too. In this one instance, though, the Night Mother had seen fit to send Hecate off to rescue a wayward child. I wondered, would she be so generous if it were me?

More than the fearsome appearance that Garnag possessed—a lifetime in the Brotherhood and over a decade in prison had left him scarred, tattooed, and one-eyed—were the fearsome truths he represented. He was the oldest member of the Brotherhood by far, and I was the youngest. I had long since given up my illusions that Babette was anything close to my age, making me the only child in the Brotherhood. Garnag had known Cicero before he was a mad jester, had been part of the order before the purges, had worshipped the Night Mother back in Cyrodiil. I was just a snot-nosed orphan from Windhelm who could barely read when he got adopted out of pity by a lonely assassin.

Next to Cicero, I felt inadequate but still capable. The jester was a mad, broken fool who elicited as much pity as envy from me. I loved him as a surrogate father and resented his closeness to Hecate. My feelings for him were complicated, to say the least.

Having just met Garnag, my feelings for him were far simpler. Next to Garnag… I felt insignificant.

"Good boy," he said heartily, slapping me on the shoulder and snapping me out of my self-loathing. "Let's get some breakfast!"

"I'm supposed to talk to Nazir…" I dithered. "About a contract. My first contract."

"Going on your first?" he asked. I nodded, and Garnag laughed. He turned me away from Nazir's office and half-dragged me toward the dining room. "A first contract is like a first woman, my boy. You're not going to be experienced enough to enjoy it as much as you should, but you're still going to love every minute of it." I blushed up to my ears at his frank talk and he laughed again.

To be honest, I had a better idea of how to kill a man than how to do… well, _anything_ with a woman. Some of the older boys had talked about girls sometimes back in Windhelm, before my mother had died. And of course I knew that my mother had been a prostitute, though I wasn't precisely sure what that meant beyond spending time with strange men for money. I mean, I wasn't completely naïve—I knew they weren't playing chess. Still, the mysteries of sex were more foreign to me than the Red Mountain of Morrowind.

"I really need to talk to Nazir…" I pleaded, not quite willing to throw off Garnag's hand. He only kept up his steady pace away from the door.

"Don't be in such a hurry," he chastised. "Get a good breakfast in you, then go ask Nazir if you can murder someone. It's good to be enthusiastic, but it's better to have priorities!"

"Shouldn't my first priority be to take contracts?" I asked, relaxing a little.

"Your highest priority is to the Night Mother, of course," Garnag replied. "But you're no good to her if you're no good to yourself. Eat, rest, exercise—take care of the basics before anything else. Enthusiasm for your work is good, but neglecting the essentials can get you killed." He patted me on the shoulder as we reached the main room, where Meena was already sitting at the table, slumped over onto her arms as though dozing. She opened one eye at us before turning away and muttering to herself.

"Thanks for the advice, Garnag," I said, seating myself on the far end of the table from Meena. The older orc was seeming less intimidating all the time.

"Always happy to share hard-earned experience with the younger generation." He creakily sat himself down at the table opposite me. "Probably won't be the last advice you'll hear from me either, what with us sharing bunk space and all."

"What." It wasn't quite a question. I hadn't considered that Garnag would be moving into the common room. He had stayed up late the night he arrived at Sanctuary, and had already been up and moving when I woke up. I had just assumed he would be taking Cicero's room, and the jester formally moving in with Hecate. The two of them spent the night together often enough.

"Ayup," he responded, nodding pleasantly. "I wasn't about to ask the Keeper to give up his private space. Anyway, it's been too long since I've been around other people. Been in solitary most of the last decade, you know."

"Being alone is awful," I agreed. I remembered how wretched I had been living by myself in Windhelm, and I hadn't been a prisoner of anything worse than my own fears. "It's just me and Meena in the common room right now, so there's plenty of room." Meena also spent most of her nights outside Sanctuary, but I didn't feel the need to point that out. She was close enough to hear, and she might decide to be contrary and sleep at home for a week if she caught me talking about her.

"Well, if recruitment picks up like the Listener hopes it does," Garnag said around a mouthful of bread, "empty beds won't be a problem anymore."

"We're recruiting?" I asked, feeling strangely crestfallen.

"The Brotherhood can't survive with one Sanctuary and seven members," he said. "No, we've got to find more brothers and sisters—and soon."

I knew that Garnag was right, of course. Still, I felt like I had just started to become comfortable with my family as it was, and now it was going to start changing. I liked having people around—I was telling the truth when I said loneliness was awful—but I also liked having my own private space to think. The common room had basically been my room for the last nine months since Meena barely used it. Now, it sounded like it was going to fill up any time. My only experience with that sort of living arrangement had been Honorhall Orphanage, and that was a bad time of my life.

Even deeper than that was another feeling, though. Hecate had chosen me as her first recruit after becoming Listener. That made me feel special; adding more recruits might make me less special. If they were all older than me, then…

By Sithis.

I suddenly sat up in my chair, my hair standing on end. Garnag continued to expound on the importance of recruitment, ignoring my distress. I quickly pushed myself back into a normal posture and forced myself to calm down. There was plenty of time to present my idea to Hecate later, after a good meal and some training. Garnag's advice was good—deal with the basics first.

And of course, I still had to ask Nazir about my first contract. I wasn't about to forget something so important. Not even after I had just solved our recruitment problems.

* * *

My meeting with Nazir had been short, sweet and to the point. I told him that Hecate had finally given me permission to take a contract, he congratulated me, and told me that he would find something for me soon. When I expressed my disappointment at not getting something right away, he had only laughed.

"Sorry, Aventus," he said, chuckling and gesturing at his empty desk. "I wasn't able to keep track of contracts while I was away on mission, and my entire backlog is gone now. Meena was a busy little kitty these last two months. I'll get something special for you as soon as I can. A first contract should be something to remember."

The idea of going on my first contract and giving my brilliant idea to Hecate had buoyed up my spirit through the day. That evening, over dinner, I had even managed some pleasant words for Babette when she came out of her room after nightfall. She seemed surprised that I wasn't still mad at her for laughing at me, but I had never been very good at holding grudges. It just didn't feel natural to me, which is why it felt so odd to have the lingering resentment that I sometimes felt flare up at Cicero.

The jester seemed to be in one of his moods again; after having gone from a weeping, joyful mess at seeing Garnag again for the first time in years, he was somber and almost sullen at dinner. I wondered if he and Hecate had been fighting again. I was sure they wouldn't start up again so soon, not after she had been gone nearly two months, but with them it always seemed to be two extremes—intense, longing gazes, or terrible shouting matches and crying.

Garnag seemed to notice Cicero's mood as well, and kept trying to engage him over dinner. Cicero would smile briefly whenever Garnag was talking, but go right back to his introspective gazing as soon as it was done. Garnag finally turned to me as I was finishing up my last scraps of food.

"Chickpea was telling me last night that you're quite the good student," he said with a grin. I couldn't help but smile back; his nickname for Cicero was hilarious and never failed to get the jester to quirk his eye up in response. "It's been a long time, but I'd like to join you for sparring tomorrow, if that's all right with both of you." Cicero and I were both quick to agree.

"Also," he continued, "I've heard a rumor, and I was wondering if you could confirm it for me." He leaned in conspiratorially and mock-covered his mouth with one hand. "I heard that Chickpea… sings." Cicero snorted and flipped his head to make the tassels of his jester's cap dance merrily. I chuckled and stood up on my chair in a burst of sudden merriment.

"If I should spy that fair maid Nelly," I sang loudly in my best impersonation of Cicero, "I'll plunge my blade into her belly!" The assembled Brotherhood clapped and hooted, and Cicero slunk low in his chair with a blush on his cheeks. The jester actually seemed embarrassed for the first time since I'd known him, but his eyes were bright and sparkling. Hoping to keep the cheerful mood going, I continued on in that vein for several minutes, even improvising a few new lines while Babette and Garnag clapped and stomped to keep the time. The only one who didn't seem amused was Nazir, but he notoriously hated music of all kinds so I didn't take it personally.

When I hopped down off my chair and took a sweeping bow, I was surprised to hear genuine applause coming from the assembled assassins. Hecate jumped up and came over to hug me.

"Aventus, that was wonderful!" she cheered. "I didn't know you could sing!"

"I can't, not really," I demurred. "I was just imitating Cicero is all."

"Hmmph," Cicero snorted. "False modesty doesn't become you. With a little training, the boy could be a bard." Cicero smiled wickedly, and I suddenly remembered his ditty about setting bards on fire.

"I don't know about that," I said, waving my hands back and forth in front of me to ward off Cicero's penchant for human-oriented arson. Although I hadn't been there personally, I had heard enough stories about Cicero's "performance" during the Burning of King Olaf to be worried about it. I looked at Hecate, who was still beaming from my performance. "There was something I wanted to talk to you about, though. If you've got some time?" She nodded and bid good evening to everyone.

We walked together back to her room, leaving Garnag and Cicero alone in the common room, chatting about old times. Meena slunk off to Divines-knew-where, while Babette uncharacteristically took Pavot out for a nighttime stroll. Nazir walked with us for a way before turning back to his own room to work on paperwork that had gone undone while he was gone. Hecate sat on her bed and I settled into one of the chairs nearby.

"I think I've solved the recruitment problem," I began. Before Hecate could interrupt me, I pressed onward. "Garnag was telling me that you came and saved him at the Night Mother's command, and that to survive we're going to have to recruit new members. Right?" She nodded quietly.

"What's your solution?" she asked. It was a good sign; she was actually listening to my opinion instead of dismissing me immediately.

"Honorhall," I replied. She looked confused, so I continued. "We can recruit the other orphans from Honorhall."

"Aventus…" Hecate bit her lip as though she were trying to figure out how to disagree with me without hurting my feelings. "We can't adopt every child in Honorhall."

"Not every child," I agreed. "Now that Grelod is gone, a lot of those kids will get real families, and I don't want to hurt their chances at a normal life. But what about the ones who helped me escape? Samuel and Hroar and Runa?"

"Sweety, I know that you miss having friends your own age-"

"That's not it!" I interrupted. "I still like Babette, even if she won't tell me what's going on with her and she's not really a kid, and I love all of you. I just think that they would be good for us." She started shaking her head. "But why not? You took me in. Why not them?"

"You're different, Aventus," Hecate said simply. "You're special. I've always thought so. You got away when they would have just stayed there and waited for someone to save them."

"I just did what I had to." To me, it had seemed pretty straightforward at the time. It certainly hadn't seemed like anything special. "I promised them that I would get help, and I did. I wouldn't have gotten away if it wasn't for their help."

"But you were the one that did those things," she pressed. "That's heroic."

"Nazir says there isn't any such thing as heroes," I responded, "only dead fools."

"That sounds like him," she muttered.

"He also says that sometimes the glamorous job isn't the most important one," I continued. "Without good support, without a family, any assassin would be just another thug killing for money. In the field…"

"Don't talk about field conditions when you've never even been on contract," Hecate snapped.

"I would have by now if you didn't treat me like a kid all the time!" I near-shouted at her. "You say I'm special, that I'm different, but you keep holding me back! How am I any different than those other kids? They've stolen, they've lied—they just need a chance, like you gave me!"

"I gave you permission for a contract," she retorted, her voice growling enough to make the books on her table rattle. "Don't make me regret it." She closed her eyes for a moment and breathed deeply. When she looked at me again, she seemed much calmer. I was grateful for that; I had seen Hecate furious before, and it wasn't something I wanted to ever be focused on me.

"Look, Aventus… I know that I've been slow to send you out into the field, but I just didn't want things to change. You can understand that, right?" I nodded grudgingly. "While we do need to recruit, I just don't think your idea will work."

"But why?" I insisted.

"Being willing to lie and steal is a small part of what we do for the Night Mother," she explained. "Those are just effects, though—not causes. If we just had to steal and connive for a living, we'd be the Thieves Guild." She snorted derisively. I had gotten the impression before that Hecate looked down on our "sister guild," despite Nazir's repeated insistence that the Guild and the Brotherhood had old, friendly ties. "You were willing to ask someone to kill for you. As far as I'm concerned, the person who asks for that is just as responsible for the life taken as the one holding the knife. The Brotherhood just… makes it fair. Not everyone has the strength to hold a blade, so we do it for them.

"More than that," she continued, "you showed that you had the strength to hold the knife yourself. Nazir is right—we don't kill for glory. But every one of us has to be willing and able to kill if it comes down to it, and not everyone has that quality. I took a big risk by bringing you in when you hadn't already killed someone. It's not a risk I can afford to take in the future. Not with the livelihood of the whole Dark Brotherhood riding on whether or not I make a mistake."

"I suppose I understand…" I was disappointed, but she was right. I didn't feel bad about trying, though.

"I'm glad we could talk," she said with a slight smile, I stood up to go but paused to ask a question.

"You said you took a risk bringing me in," I said, looking into her deep blue eyes. I wasn't very good at reading people in general, but Hecate had a bad habit—she couldn't look into someone's eyes while she was lying to them. "Have you ever regretted it?"

"Not even once," she said, and her eyes never wavered. That was good enough for me.

* * *

I was training with Cicero and Garnag a few days later when Nazir came in to watch us. While he had started off my training regimen months before, he rarely involved himself in my daily exercises any longer. Between his own lack of exercise and his secondary role as our cook, I sometimes wondered how he avoided getting fat. I did my best to not let his presence distract me from my immediate concern, which was sparring with Garnag.

I had expected the old orc to favor hammers or axes, but he seemed to prefer one-handed blades like Cicero did, though Garnag's choice ran more toward long blades than daggers. The first time we sparred, I found out why: Garnag was a mage as well as a swordsman. The first time I had come in at his right side, hoping to exploit his blind spot, his left hand moved in a quick arcane gesture and sent a nearby rack of weapons flying at me. I barely managed to leap aside, only to find Garnag standing over me with his wooden sword at my neck. I knew better than to protest unfairness—as Nazir had long since drilled into my head, my enemies wouldn't be fair in the field, so I couldn't expect my sparring partners to be fair at home.

It was my first up-close experience with magic. Babette could do alchemy, of course, which wasn't quite the same thing. But real magic—the ability to manipulate arcane forces—was something I had never laid eyes on before. My wonder lasted most of a day before it just became another tactical consideration to overcome. Garnag wasn't as fast as me, so if I kept moving I could distract him from his aim. I didn't beat him regularly, but I still won our matches more regularly than I did against Cicero. I never beat Cicero.

When we finished our current set of exercises and ran through one more sparring bout, I threw a towel around my shoulders and walked over to where Nazir was sitting patiently. I poured a ladle of water over my head from a nearby bucket to cool down a little and sat heavily in the other chair.

"Good news for me, I hope?" I asked with a smile.

"Of a sort," Nazir responded, one of his lips quirking up in something close to a smile. "I have a contract lined up for you… but it won't be available for a month."

"A month!" I exclaimed, dropping my towel in disbelief. "Aren't there any contracts available any sooner?"

"Well, there are," he allowed, "but I think all of them are too advanced for you. I also think you'll appreciate this one more."

"All right then," I said, feeling somewhat disappointed at the wait, "why the delay?"

"The target is out of the province at the moment," he said. Now he had my interest.

"I thought that the borders were all closed, except to official Imperial traffic."

"They are," he said. "The target is a slaver with an Imperial diplomatic clearance. According to the information I've gathered, he's been taking Imperial women and children who lost their husbands and fathers in the civil war and promising to ship them back to Cyrodiil. Instead, he puts them into the holds of ships at hidden docks and sells them into slavery."

"You're right," I admitted, my voice low and deadly. "I am interested in this one. Anyone who would stoop so low deserves whatever is coming to him."

"We got the contract through one of his victims who managed to evade her captors long enough to perform the Black Sacrament," Nazir replied without commenting on my moralizing. "Normally, it would be my duty to meet with her and arrange payment."

"You want me to do it instead?" I asked.

"No, actually," Nazir replied. "She's dead." I felt my heart sink and I went pale. Suddenly the room was freezing cold. "The Night Mother gave us the petition—called her 'the Escaped Slave'—but by the time we got any more information, she'd already been recaptured and killed. If this were a normal contract, I would have let it drop. But we don't ignore the Night Mother."

He pushed the folder with the relevant information toward me. I took it with nerveless finger and began to look through the packet. The first page gave the target's name as Sullian Crito, a minor diplomat with a mercantile interest on the side. Guys like him got to avoid the border closings by virtue of having a friend or a relative somewhere important back in Cyrodiil. It looked like he supplied general goods stores throughout the province, though a lot of his wares went through Whiterun. He was out of the province at the moment on a "buying trip." I could guess what he was buying.

Nazir's folder was very thorough. It made me furious enough to want to do the contract even without a promise of payment. Still, I knew Nazir well enough to realize that he didn't have the same priorities that I did.

"Where's the Brotherhood's profit on this one?" I asked without looking up from the list of missing persons associated with Crito. It was a long list.

"Isn't serving the Night Mother profit enough?" he asked with a slight sardonic tone. I saw Cicero look our way briefly, a moue of distaste on his face for Nazir's flippancy, but it didn't seem like quite enough to push him over the edge. I think that Nazir delighted in pushing Cicero's buttons whenever possible, since the jester seemed to naturally get on the Redguard's nerves.

"For me it is," I said with total sincerity. "I also know that the Brotherhood always looks to make a profit off a contract whenever possible." I looked up from the paperwork and grudgingly added, "Plus I still owe Cicero some money." I could see the fool beam a bright smile my way and give me a quick wink; Cicero appreciated it when people paid their debts. Nazir laughed and nodded.

"You're right, of course," he admitted. "Sullian Crito is a wealthy man off the money taken from his victims, as well as his own business. I believe he's stashed a good bit of his wealth in gemstones. He takes his payment in uncut gemstones, smuggles them back to Cyrodiil for cutting and polishing, and then resells them in the Imperial markets at a significant profit." Nazir passed over an extra sheet that wasn't in the folder.

"He's on his way back from Cyrodiil now to make his last pickup before the winter settles in," he continued. "The slavers he works with leave the stones in a dead drop on a small island in the Sea of Ghosts, off the coast from Winterhold. If we take the stones now, there's a chance that the slavers will find out and tip off Crito before he arrives."

"And if we kill Crito before he arrives," I continued, seeing the train of thought, "the slavers could hear about it and take the stones before we get there." Nazir nodded.

"Since we're low on manpower right now, we can't afford to send two teams," Nazir said. "We need someone to get to the island at the same time as the merchant, kill him, and return with the stones. We'll be able to fence them through the Thieves Guild for a decent chunk of gold, minus their 'handling fee.' Though I know you'd happily do this one for the approval of the Night Mother-" This elicited a growl from Cicero, but Nazir ignored him. "You will, of course, be paid for your work. It's your first contract, after all."

"How much?" I asked, more out of curiosity than anything else.

"A thousand septims," Nazir replied. I whistled at the amount. It was more money than I had ever had in my whole life. "There's a bonus of that same amount if you can bring back his official travel permits and signet ring. We need them both for you to get the bonus. One's no good without the other."

"Thank you," I said. "It's perfect." Nazir stood and patted my shoulder amicably. Before he left, he paused and looked down at me.

"There is one more thing." His serious tone broke me out of my reverie. I put down the papers and looked up at him questioningly. "Garnag will be going along as your backup. Kill well and often."

I looked up at Garnag, shocked. I hadn't imagined that the old orc would be going back out into the field, but I supposed it made sense when I thought about it. My earlier awe for him had quickly bled away once we had sparred together for a few days. He was beating me in sparring pretty often, but I was quickly outpacing his ability to keep up. He was slow and half-blind. How was he going to be any good to me in the field? The folder said that Crito traveled with a single bodyguard, so I supposed that Garnag could be useful as a distraction or something…

Cicero snapped me out of my worry when he came dancing over, pulling me up out of my chair and into an impromptu jig. He laughed giddily, sweeping me back and forth in a hopping, rollicking dance.

"Wonderful!" he cried. "Wonderful! Garnag and the boy, killing together! Old meets new!"

"Yeah," I said with a bright tone I didn't feel. "Wonderful."

Garnag came over to where Cicero was spinning and pirouetting after finally letting me go. He slapped me on the back and I staggered under the suddenness of it.

"Looking forward to working with you," he grunted. "When I heard you hadn't gone on your first kill yet, I went to Nazir and volunteered to join you."

"You did?" In my heart, I had sort of hoped that Cicero would go with me. As if reading my thoughts, Garnag laughed aloud and gestured at the jester.

"Chickpea's a good assassin, but he's too anxious in the field to be good backup," he chortled. "If he's half as jumpy as he used to be, whoever you went out to kill would be dead before you even got a chance to spit at them." Garnag settled himself into the chair recently vacated by Nazir. "These old bones are settled enough that you'll have to do all the heavy lifting. It'll give you a chance to shine on your first mission while still having someone there to watch your back." He stretched, and all of his joints popped from the recent exertion of sparring. "Can't deny it would be good for me to ease back into it all too. It's been a long time since my blade tasted blood."

Garnag reached out with one huge hand, and it took me a minute to realize he was offering to shake with me. I took his hand very seriously and shook it firmly. I appreciated the gesture; it was a handshake between men.

"I hope the boy gets his bonus!" Cicero chortled gleefully. "Then he'll almost be paid off from his debt after only one mission!"

"Almost?" I asked, looking at him with dismay. "How much do I owe you anyway?"

But Cicero and Garnag only laughed in response to my question, two old friends finding shared humor in a younger brother's naivety. My ears burned, but soon enough I was laughing too. My first contract was scheduled and all was right with the world. I could afford to laugh at myself a little bit.

* * *

…_to be continued…_


	14. Chapter 14: In for the Kill

**Chapter 14: In for the Kill**

It was the first week of Frostfall, marking a whole year since I had joined the Dark Brotherhood, the elite band of assassins serving the Night Mother and delivering vengeance to the guilty. After pushing to go on contract for months on end, our Listener—Hecate, once known as Diana the Dragonborn—had finally given me permission to take lives in the name of the Dread Father, Sithis. I had dreamed of this day for far longer than that, ever since I had used my own mother's bones to enact the terrible ritual called the Black Sacrament.

When Garnag and I left Sanctuary, my heart had been full of joy at the idea of finally fulfilling my destiny as an assassin. Neither of us had our own horses; Garnag had spent the last decade in prison, leaving him with no possessions to speak of, and I hadn't yet earned any coin to buy one. Everything we owned was borrowed or a gift. The Dark Brotherhood was a generous family, for the most part, and neither of us wanted for supplies.

Cicero had been generous enough to loan Garnag his horse, a brown he called Hilarity. I had expected to wind up riding Nazir's gray gelding, Sirocco, but was shocked when Hecate had pushed the reins of her own horse into my hands. The black demon-steed called Shadowmere had been a fixture in Dark Brotherhood lore since before any of us had joined the order. It had been the horse I rode when I was first taken from Windhelm to become a member, riding pillion behind Hecate through a cold night a year past. I was honored beyond words.

Garnag had chosen to pack lightly. He carried a simple iron sword and a brace of daggers, as well as a small stock of potions provided by Babette, our alchemist and resident girl of mystery. They weren't as good as real healing—Hecate had once described them as "adrenaline in a bottle"—but they would keep you going if you were wounded and needed to stay active. He also insisted on bringing along a saddlebag with enough dried food for a week. The trip should be shorter than that, and I trusted the hunting and foraging skills I had gained since joining the Brotherhood, but Garnag was persistent about always "keeping the basics on hand."

My own kit was a little more specialized. I preferred blunt weapons to bladed ones, but I always kept a knife on me as a backup. Cicero had shown me dozens of uses for short blades that I would never have considered before becoming an assassin; knives were versatile tools. My own primary weapon was a flanged mace with a solid steel head that could crush steel plate when wielded at full force. It wasn't a subtle weapon, but I had never been a very subtle person. I also brought along fishing line, hooks, and a fire kit. After the hellish trip I had endured wandering the roads of Skyrim when I escaped Honorhall Orphanage, I was dead set on never again being caught in the wilderness without a way to catch food or make fire.

While Garnag preferred to wear normal clothes on mission, perhaps because of his skill as a mage, I insisted on getting to wear real armor on contract. Nazir had shown me the basics of light armor—how to use it to deflect incoming attacks, how to wear it comfortably, that sort of thing. Hecate still hadn't wanted to issue me a permanent suit of Dark Brotherhood armor, since she didn't yet know how tall I was going to wind up after finishing my growth spurt, but she had seen the use in protecting my vital organs while in dangerous situations. She had turned out a basic suit of reinforced leather armor in my size in almost less time than Nazir could make dinner. It fit like a dream and felt like it could stop a crossbow bolt at point-blank range.

The day I left for my first contract, everyone had gathered near the Black Door to say goodbye to me. Even Meena, who normally didn't care one whit about anyone but herself, had come to see me off. Hecate had hugged me close like a real mother and whispered, "Be safe, Aretino." Not the usual "Kill well and kill often" that was used as the standard greeting and departing phrase by the Dark Brotherhood. She had also said something else, something that I had never heard her say before—not even to Cicero.

"I love you."

My mind kept coming back to "Be safe," though. It warmed my heart to think about, even if it wasn't particularly practical advice for an assassin. Safety wasn't something we dealt with on a regular basis; my own life had been fraught with danger, even before joining the Brotherhood. My daily training with Cicero, Meena and Garnag—all of them skilled teachers—could easily turn lethal if one of us made a mistake. I could have gotten killed saving Babette from bandits, even if she still insisted that she didn't need any saving.

Still, my heart needed all the warming it could get—given how cold the rest of me was after spending two days in a duck blind on a gods-forsaken island in the middle of the Sea of Ghosts.

* * *

It had taken us two days of hard riding along the old coast road to travel from Dawnstar to Winterhold, where the fabled College of Mages lurked on a spire of rock connected to the mainland by a perilous-looking bridge. It was my first visit to the city of wizards, which was far less imposing than I had expected. The college itself was awe-inspiring, a mighty fortress illuminated by magical light that made it seem half-real from a distance. The city of Winterhold on the other hand was a ramshackle collection of huts, half-finished houses, and a few ratty-looking taverns.

Garnag was able to tell me that the city was actually once far grander, but that a terrible earthquake had leveled most of it years ago. The bridge to the college had suffered serious damage during the quake, and parts of it had fallen into the sea along with the city of Winterhold. Apparently, some Nords blamed the mages for the earthquake, since the college had suffered so little damage compared to the city.

"Did they have something to do with it?" I asked, looking up at the huge fortress.

"Who knows?" Garnag rumbled. "But in my experience, it's never worthwhile to credit malice where stupidity is just as likely a cause. So if they did, it was probably an accident." He spat noisily into the sea. "People are always looking to blame mages for their problems too. I suppose it helps you deal with tragedy if you can put a face to it, be angry instead of sad. That kind of thing can wind up hurting a lot of people if it's misdirected, though."

I understood what Garnag was getting at. For a long time Grelod the Kind, headmistress of Honorhall Orphanage, had been the face in my mind when I thought of the world's ills. Even after Hecate had killed the old crone, she was still the first thing I thought of when someone talked about evil. Rolff Stone-Fist had become my personal boogeyman after I slit his throat as part of my initiation ritual to join the Brotherhood. Lately, he was haunting my nightmares less and less, for which I could only be thankful. But I still comprehended the need to put a human face on your misery.

"Where did you learn magic?" I asked, and immediately felt sheepish. "Sorry, Garnag. I know we're not supposed to ask each other about life before the Brotherhood."

"No worries, kid," he rumbled. Whenever other people called me "kid," I felt resentful about it. For some reason, it didn't feel as condescending coming from Garnag. "I was trained in the College of Whispers back in Cyrodiil. They were one of the groups that took up training mages for the Empire after the old Mage's Guild dissolved. I wasn't even fully trained when the Brotherhood recruited me." He laughed as though recalling good memories. "Being a court mage wouldn't have suited me anyway."

We stabled our horses in Winterhold, paying from our small petty cash fund to put them up. I paid a few septims extra for discretion, leaving the stablehand with the idea that my master was a powerful visiting mage who would turn him into an ash pile if anything happened to the horses while we were gone. Shadowmere snorted menacingly right on cue, making the poor man blanch with fear and leaving me to worry how well the horse understood me.

We acquired a small rowboat from a fisherman and rowed out into the Sea of Ghosts, following Nazir's map into the fading twilight. I understood how the sea got its name as night fell and cold fog billowed up from the surface of the water. The dim light from our hooded lantern made the swirling mists look as though they had awful, tormented faces in them. A quick dip of my finger into the water off the side of the rowboat let me know that it was cold enough I would probably freeze to death in under a minute if I fell out. Fortunately, we were able to find the island with little trouble.

The island that my target—Sullian Crito, a corrupt diplomat turned slaver—had picked for his dead drop with his pirate allies was a scrubby little plot of land maybe two hundred feet across. It rose a dozen feet out of the water, rife with rocky outcroppings, growths of thick brush and nettles, and a thriving pod of horkers living in a reef on the western edge of the tear-shaped islet.

"What a lovely little chunk of rock," I commented as we dragged the rowboat ashore and flipped it over. My breath steamed in the air as we covered the boat in handfuls of sand, rock, and seaweed. It would make it harder to recover the boat for a quick getaway, but camouflage was a necessity for the mission. We needed the island to seem undisturbed until Crito showed up to collect the gemstones he was receiving as payment from the slavers. If anything looked out of place, we might wind up with Crito never showing—or worse, his pirate allies raiding the island to look for us.

"I think you should get to name it," Garnag joked. "You're about to kill its former owner, after all."

"I'm no good with names," I complained. "Babette and Hecate always seem to be able to come up with that sort of thing on the fly. They know a bunch of ancient languages and stuff, and I don't know any of that." I looked around the desolate piece of land and shook my head. "Couldn't think of anything to call this piece of crap island if I wanted to." Garnag smiled his tusky grin at me.

"Shiteholme," he said. I looked at him, confused. "I know a few old pre-Empire languages too. That's from the old Nord tongue. Means 'crap island.'"

We looked at each other a moment before bursting out laughing, holding our stomachs and trying to keep from making too much noise. I wiped tears from my eyes and finally nodded.

"Shiteholme, it is," I managed to cough out. "Now let's look around and find someplace to put up our blind."

"Ahh, Fortress Shite," Garnag mused sagely. That sent me into another gale of ill-kept laughter. If all of the old members of the Brotherhood were as funny as Garnag, it was no wonder that Cicero had become such an amusing fellow.

* * *

Our first night on Shiteholme wasn't so bad. We worked to quickly set up a camouflaged tent, and the exertion kept us warm until we could crawl into our bedrolls and collapse into an exhausted sleep. By the time we woke up, it was sleeting heavily, and we had to go out into the freezing rain to renew the basic camouflage from the previous night and reinforce it. I grateful to have Garnag along; the island was lonely and miserable, and the effort to set up a camp would have been much more with just me doing it.

As part of that work we set up a couple of square yards of oilcloth on stakes, creating an overhang to keep the rain off us while we watched the shore. There was only one place on the island that was useful as a spot for boats to come ashore, which helped our surveillance significantly. The "duck blind"—we called it that from an old hunter's term for a concealed sniping position—was right outside the entrance to the tent, surrounded on all sides by uprooted bramble bushes and scrub brush.

Garnag and I both worked for hours to build our little camp spot, taking frequent breaks to warm our hands over the small fire we had built in a sunken pit inside the blind. We couldn't let it get too big lest the smoke or glare give us away. More than that, it had to be kept small so that it didn't dry out the camouflage enough to set it on fire or build up enough heat under the oilcloth to set it smoldering. It took most of a morning and by the time we were done, we were both soaked, frozen, and stiff. Still, I couldn't deny the quality of the work; from further away than a dozen paces, you couldn't tell that our camp was anything but a particularly thick bramble patch.

We had discussed searching the island to see if we could find Crito's dead drop before the merchant arrived, but dismissed it. Between the risk of being spotted by a passing ship and the sheer effort involved—even searching a small island thoroughly was a task of days at minimum—we decided it was simply easier to wait for Crito to arrive. Garnag said there was no point doing extra work when you could make your target do it for you. I thought it was good advice, especially given the miserable weather.

Once everything was situated, we dove into the tent and stripped out of our wet clothes. Since I was technically the one on mission and Garnag was just there as backup, I volunteered to leave the tent to hang them up over the fire. It made me think of when I had stolen clothes from the miners at Shor's Stone, which brought a wistful smile to my face. It amazed me how something that had been such a trial at the time could turn amusing in retrospect.

When I got back inside, the tent was surprisingly warm. Garnag was sitting on a bedroll in his loincloth, cupping his hands in front of him and concentrating intently. It shocked me a little to see a tiny ball of flame hovering over his cupped palms, rolling back and forth like a sphere of liquid fire.

"Close the door, kid," Garnag growled. "You're letting the heat out." I hurried to seal the tent flap and skirted around the edge of the tent. I was afraid that bumping into Garnag might cause the fire to jump out of his hands or something, and I didn't fancy catching the tent on fire because I had been clumsy.

"I didn't know you could do that," I commented when I had gotten to the safety of my own bedroll.

"Pretty much every trained mage can make fire," he replied. Garnag's eyes seemed glassy with fatigue and concentration. "It takes a lot of finesse to just make a small one, though. It's easier to just cut loose and turn the air into flames, but that's less useful than you would think. Unless you're specialized in destruction magic, a sword does a hell of a lot more damage to a man than burning off his eyebrows and a layer of skin." He sighed and let the flames go out; it began to get colder in the tent almost immediately.

"Why'd you stop?" I asked, crawling into my bedroll to stay warm in the absence of our magical space heater.

"Magic takes energy," Garnag said, beginning to bundle up himself. "Making a small flame doesn't take less energy than setting a man on fire—it just takes more control. Since I'm not specialized in destruction magics, I'm not as familiar with the ways to cut corners with the spell or to improve its efficiency, so it burns through my magicka fast."

"Magicka? What's that?"

"Some call it the 'life blood of Nirn' or other fancy talk, but it's just the word that means a person's magical energy," Garnag explained. "Everyone's got some but mages train to let their bodies hold more of it, and to recover it faster once it's all gone. Most folks think a wizard can just point his hands at someone and shoot fire, but there's a lot more to it than that. Magic's an expendable resource—like money or blood. Spend it too fast, or at the wrong time, and you wind up with none at the moment you need it most."

"Do you think I could be a mage?" I asked, more out of curiosity than any real desire.

"Probably not," Garnag said quickly. I looked at him with a hurt expression on my face and he laughed. "No offense or anything, kid. It's just that most people can't learn magic. They don't have the right drive, or enough patience, or a whole slew of things." He scratched his stubbly chin for a moment before continuing. "My old teachers back at the College of Whispers said that maybe one in a hundred humans have the right kind of mentality to be a mage, and that less one in ten of those actually wound up getting the training. It varies from race to race too; lots more Altmer have the talent for magic than Imperials, and a lot less Khajiit and Nords."

"Well, obviously some Nords can learn magic," I noted. "Just look at the College of Winterhold."

"I said less, not none," he retorted. "Places with an established mage guild or school wind up with a lot less of their potential wizards falling through the cracks too." He paused briefly before rooting through one of the packs to grab some bread. He broke it in half and passed some to me. "I wouldn't doubt that you could probably learn a spell or two—most folks can manage that if they're stubborn enough—but knowing a couple of spells doesn't make you a mage, any more than owning a knife makes you an assassin."

"What does make a person a mage then?" I asked.

"Why the interest?" he asked between mouthfuls of bread and cheese.

"I'm just curious," I said with a shrug. "All this stuff interests me. Magic, stories, songs… It's all really interesting stuff, but no one in the Brotherhood likes answering questions. Babette always acts like I'm dumb for not knowing all this stuff already, Hecate doesn't seem like she knows much more about any of it than I do, and Nazir says that asking questions is a bad habit for an assassin."

"Well, Nazir has a point," Garnag chuckled around a mouthful of food. "Too much curiosity can be lethal for an assassin—but so can too much ignorance. I don't mind questions, though. I went a decade without any conversation deeper than my monthly appointment with an Imperial torturer." He laughed mirthlessly, an old and deep pain in the sound. "And after the first year, he didn't even ask me questions anymore."

We ate in silence for a few minutes, listening to the slow, cold drizzle spattering against the tent. Finally, I looked up and spoke again.

"Thanks, Garnag," I said with all the sincerity I could muster. "I really appreciate it."

"No worries, kid," he rumbled as he curled deeper into his sleeping bag. "But in exchange, you're taking first watch. Wake me up in four hours."

* * *

The next two days were freezing and rainy. Garnag and I alternated on keeping watches while the other slept, but we also spent a lot of time keeping watch together. My body was cold most of the time, but my mind felt like it was on fire. For the first time in my life, I was with someone who didn't mind answering questions and could actually answer some of them. Garnag didn't always know the things I was interested in, but he knew enough of them to keep me finding new things to ask about.

Even with the good company, the weather dragged on our spirits and was physically demanding. Garnag had gotten in better shape than he was in when he escaped prison, but there was only so much improvement that you could see in a month. More than that, he was just old. Sometimes I could hear his raspy breathing turn wet or harsh, which would be followed by a bout of heavy coughing. Garnag always denied that he was in any discomfort, though, which didn't really ease my mind about it.

It was the evening of our second day on Shiteholme, cold rain slowly drizzling from the sky, when we saw the ship.

About a mile out from the northern shore of the island, a single-masted longship loomed up out of the perpetual fog that hung like a pall on the Sea of Ghosts. Its sail was furled and the oars were out, paddling it slowly through the cold water. I thought I could just barely make out a distant drumbeat keeping time for the rowers, a low and steady thrum like a heartbeat.

"It's time," Garnag said, pulling his sword.

"No, wait," I replied, putting my hand on Garnag's arm. To his credit, he immediately relaxed his posture and lowered the blade.

"What's up?" he asked. I was almost shocked into silence. Garnag was easily the oldest member of the Dark Brotherhood as far as I knew, and he was deferring to me about something. He wasn't treating me like a child, but like an assassin—like his partner. I quickly recovered my poise and pointed out at the ship.

"That's not a merchant vessel," I said. Divines knew I had seen enough ships in port at Windhelm to know what they looked like. "Any trader would have two or three sails, plus rowboats or dinghies to let the crew go ashore at smaller ports." I peered out through the fog, feeling a sick sense of certainty building in my gut. "That's a raider."

"A pirate ship?" Garnag asked. "Good thing we built Fortress Shiteholme after all, eh?"

"What in Sithis' name are they doing here?" I cursed between gritted teeth. "There shouldn't be any reason for them to show up at all."

"Maybe they're just passing through," Garnag suggested.

"No," I shook my head. "Look at the way they're tacking the ship. They're coming into shallow water to weigh anchor." I did a rough mental calculation for the size of the ship and the number of oars I could see. "Probably twenty or thirty crew aboard."

"I'd cut that number to less than ten," Garnag offered. "I may not know ships, but we know that Crito is working with slavers, right?" I nodded. "Well, slavers never pass up the opportunity to squeeze a little extra labor out of their cargo. My bet is that the people pulling those oars have chains on their legs too."

As we watched, the longship pulled as far up onto the beach as possible, which still left three-quarters of the vessel in the water. Men scrambled on deck to throw lines off the ship and a heavy anchor on a chain dropped from the stern of the vessel. A pair of rough-looking men wearing grungy leathers jumped off the bow of the ship into the soft sand of Shiteholme, cursing at the cold water that splashed around their ankles. They looked like Nords, though, so it was too much to hope that they would get frostbite or something. I always wondered how the hell Nords could endure the cold so well, even the ones who had been raised out of Skyrim.

By the time full night had fallen, a double handful of pirates had come down onto the beach. It looked like Garnag had been close enough in his count from the way the last one off the ship closed and locked the hatch to the interior before descending the rope ladder to the beach. They set up a bonfire, collecting scrub and driftwood from along the beach; Garnag and I nervously waited to see if they would come as far afield as our duck blind or the covered rowboat, but they never did.

"Remind me to find out which of Nazir's informants gave him the information about this contract," Garnag whispered viciously, "so I can personally kick him in his balls." I could only nod in agreement.

The pirates had barely finished setting up their rough camp when a low horn note blew from the darkness off shore. One of the pirates, a bulky man with slightly better-looking armor and cruel scar running down his bald head from crown to chin, took a hunting horn off his belt and blew two notes in response. The bright light from the bonfire illuminated the pirates well enough—and incidentally made it harder for them to see Garnag and me—but from our vantage point it also threw enough light off the shore to dimly illuminate the shape of a large dinghy rowing toward Shiteholme.

As the smaller boat pulled up onto the shoreline, I could see four men in it. The man in the stern was a heavily bundled Imperial who looked like he was sucking a lemon. Nazir's dossier had been thorough enough to let me recognize him as Sullian Crito, my target. Apparently, instead of traveling with a single bodyguard, he had three. Two of them worked the oars while the third stayed in the bow of the boat, holding a heavy-looking crossbow with a quarrel locked and loaded. The heavy cloaks and greatcoats they wore couldn't hide the shape of their armor, which I guessed to be studded leather or something similar. No one would risk wearing heavy armor on a boat—no one sane, anyway.

Almost a dozen pirates and three bodyguards instead of one. This just kept getting better and better.

"Mission's blown," Garnag said sourly. "We better just lay low until they finish up and get out of here."

"No!" I said loudly enough that I was worried my voice might carry to our enemies. I calmed down and started again. "No, I will not give up my first contract because of a little setback."

"Kid, I admire your guts," he replied, shaking his head, "but there's a difference between a 'little setback' and what we've got here. That being a complete clusterfuck."

"We can do this," I insisted. I scanned the two forces and noted the way they kept their distance from one another. They kept their hands near their weapons, even as the pirate captain and Crito walked out to meet one another. The bodyguard with the crossbow kept it pointed at the ground instead of the pirates, but his finger never left the trigger. I smiled broadly in the darkness and chuckled to myself.

"What's so funny?" he asked.

"Why do all the work," I whispered, "when we can make our enemies do it for us?"

* * *

It had taken me almost ten minutes to creep through the underbrush on the edge of the island, skirting the waterline, until I reached the pirate ship. The pirate captain and the merchant were still deep in conversation, Crito's hands moving animatedly as he occasionally raised his voice. As near as I could tell from the parts of the discussion I could pick up, the pirates had shown up to "renegotiate" their arrangement with Crito, who had brought along extra security to make sure that their new distribution plan didn't involve cutting out the middle man.

That's the problem with dealing with thieves and cutthroats—you could never be sure they wouldn't jump ship at the first sight of a better deal. The paranoia in the air worked to our advantage in this case, though.

As I settled my back up against the hull of the pirate ship I drew my mace, keeping the head low and behind me to avoid the chance of it reflecting back any firelight. I drew my cloak tight around my shoulders and pulled up the cowl of my hood. While I didn't yet own a suit of the distinctive black-and-red armor of the Dark Brotherhood, I still owned several outfits with the colors and had changed into one of them earlier. The hood and cowl covered everything of my face but my eyes—and had the distinct advantage of keeping my face warm in the frigid autumn air.

"We have an arrangement, Onming," Crito was snarling when I was finally in position. "A man of my position doesn't deal well with subordinates trying to change their fee midway through a bargain."

"I am no one's subordinate, Imperial dog!" Onming snarled. The bodyguard with the crossbow twitched briefly in his direction at the shout, and his own men stirred in anticipation of violence. I smiled beneath my cowl; this was going to be easier than I thought. "Given the market demand for our product-" he began.

"By the Eight!" Crito cried. "Did you take a correspondence course in economics since the last time I saw you, Onming?" The pirate captain scowled fiercely at the merchant's sarcasm. "Can we just stick to business as usual here?"

It could be trouble if Crito was half as good at talking as he seemed. He might even be able to turn the situation around and talk the pirates into a better mood. I certainly couldn't allow that to happen. I lowered my cowl so that my mouth was free and proceeded to shout at the top of my lungs, hoping Garnag was in position.

"Look out!" I screamed, trying to deepen my voice. At the same moment, Garnag whispered the words of a powerful charm that confused the minds of its targets. I could see the crossbowman's eyes flash briefly as the magic took hold of his mind, but if I hadn't been staring directly at him, I never would have noticed. With a scream of rage, the bodyguard brought his crossbow up and sank a bolt directly into Onming's eye. The steel tip punched out the back of his skull in a bloody mess, and the pirate captain dropped dead into the sand with a stupid look of surprise on his face.

As the crossbowman tried to reload, a look of furious anger on his face, Onming's crew drew their weapons and surged forward. The first pirate to reach their captain's killer sank a one-handed axe into the man's collarbone with enough force that I could hear bones snapping from my hiding spot. The crossbowman screamed but had enough life left in him to kick the pirate away; the axe remained stuck in his chest as the pirate went staggering away, losing his grip on the weapon.

Behind him, the other two men drew long swords; one of them grabbed the screaming Crito and pushed him behind them. That was good training for a bodyguard. The pirates outnumbered the bodyguards, but without their captain they were a disorganized rabble. They came forward in a surging wave, screaming and hacking wildly with their motley assortment of knifes, short swords, and boarding axes. The bodyguards paced backward calmly once Crito was out of the way, giving ground easily while weaving a defensive pattern with their longer blades.

The crossbowman, still screaming from a combination of pain and magically-induced anger, finished reloading his weapon and shot the man he had pushed away in the kneecap. The pirate shouted before toppling over, only to have the man who crippled him jump onto his chest and begin smashing him in the face with the butt of the crossbow. In seconds only a bloody mess remained of the man's face, and the crossbowman didn't look like he was going to let up before erasing the man's head completely. Another pirate neatly split his skull with an axe, mercifully putting an end to his anger.

The pirates were warily circling the remaining bodyguards after losing three of their number in the initial charge. Only two of them were dead, but the third was laying on the sand bleeding from a broad gut wound and moaning softly. Crito was cowering in his dinghy, clearly hoping that no one would turn their attention to him; his occasional frantic glances at the oars made it clear he was considering abandoning his own men if he could manage to row the boat on his own.

One of the bodyguards stumbled slightly, probably from a quick telekinetic shove from Garnag, and the pirates facing him surged forward in anticipation. Their enthusiasm turned out to be misplaced when the man recovered quickly enough to stab one of them through the chest. The unintentional lunge opened his flank to another pirate, who got in a lucky stab to the bodyguard's neck. With his artery spraying blood onto his cloak, the critically wounded man spun and neatly beheaded his killer before dropping into the sand.

After the exchange was over, the lone remaining bodyguard was facing the three pirates who were still capable of fighting. The bodyguard was breathing heavily from exertion while his foes were still fairly fresh, having taken the ruthless tack of allowing their comrades to wear him down with their deaths.

That was the moment Garnag chose to step from concealment, blasting fire into the air from both hands and yelling at the top of his lungs.

Two of the pirates turned and ran away screaming. The bodyguard took the opportunity to hamstring one of them and deliver a quick coup de grace before resuming his defensive posture against his single remaining foe. The pirate who managed to escape the bodyguard ran directly back toward the ship, as though he believed he could pilot a single-masted longboat by himself.

His path took him right past my hiding place.

Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I crushed his thigh with my mace, sending him flying end over end before landing hard enough in the surf to knock the breath out of him. He never got a chance for another one before my next blow broke his neck. I looked back toward the bonfire when I finished; in the time it had taken me to end the pirate, his comrade and the bodyguard had locked steel and were exchanging rapid strikes and counterstrikes. It all looked very swordsman-like.

Rather than bother letting them duke it out fairly, Garnag hit the bodyguard with some sort of magic that locked his joints up for a split-second, long enough for the lone remaining pirate to disembowel him. The dying man groaned once before collapsing. The pirate didn't have long to celebrate his victory; a pair of Garnag's throwing knives caught him in the chest, sending him to his knees. I stalked out of the shadows and put my mace through the back of his skull, ending the battle with a wet thump.

Garnag and I nodded to each other with satisfaction and turned to see Crito desperately trying to figure out how to work the oars of his rowboat. Garnag ended his efforts by casually stepping onto one of the oars and snapping it under his weight. Crito screamed like a woman and scrambled to the end of the boat away from him, drawing a dagger from under his cloak. I stepped up and casually backhanded the knife out of his hand and into the sea. He was so obviously inept with weapons that it was like fighting a child.

I reminded myself of who this man was and the things he had done, then took the lead. Garnag was my backup after all; this was my contract.

"What do you want?" Crito sobbed, cradling his bruised hand. "I have money! Lots of money!"

"Where are the gemstones, merchant?" I rasped in my best threatening voice.

"Oh, Divines," he wept. "Spare me, please!" I leaned in and grabbed the collar of his cloak, using the leverage from the side of rowboat to tilt him back over the frigid waters of the Sea of Ghosts.

"The stones!" I shouted. I was starting to really enjoy being menacing, especially considering how deserving my target was.

"On the ship!" he screeched. "They're on the ship! Who are you people? How do you know about the stones?" Garnag leaned forward and dropped a folded piece of parchment onto Crito's lap. I let go of his collar, and he leaned forward to look at the paper. Inside was a black ink handprint. The merchant's eyes widened as he saw the symbol.

"We know," Garnag whispered as I raised my mace over my head with both hands. Crito's terrified eyes flickered up at me just in time for the steel head to bury itself in his face.

It was perfect.

* * *

After we boarded the ship to search for the gemstones, I took the captain's key and went below decks. Garnag rumbled something about it not being our problem, but I reminded him that it was my contract and he gave no more argument. The hold was divided into three compartments: forward and aft storage rooms, and a central oar gallery. In the gallery was the most abject display of human misery I had laid eyes on since Honorhall.

My initial assumption of twenty or thirty crewmen had been off significantly. There were two rowers at each oar, forty men and women in total. They were chained together and to the rough bench on which they sat, wearing little more than rags and showing obvious signs of beating and starvation. As the hatch to their reeking chamber opened, the ones who were awake scrambled to wake up their dozing compatriots as they grabbed for the oars. This scene must have been played out many times before.

This time, their gaunt faces grew confused as Garnag and I stepped into the hold, our faces still hooded and cowled from our slaughter. I stopped halfway down the stairs, looking around in pity and disgust. For a moment, I wished I could resurrect Sullian Crito just so I could kill him again.

"Your captors are dead," I said loudly to the sea of unwashed faces below me. "I recommend that you spend a couple of days resting and regaining your strength, then plot a course for Winterhold. If you work together, it's less than a day away at good sail—less if you don't mind getting back at the oars for a few hours."

I pulled the keys to their chains out of my pocket and tossed them down the stairs.

"Unlock your chains and wait ten minutes," I continued. "By then we'll be gone." I started to turn, but then paused and looked back at the human cargo. "But we'll be watching. If any of you have dreams of seizing control here, drown them deep and work with your fellows to return to civilization. What happened to your captors could just as easily become your fate if you decide to be like them."

With that, I walked back up the stairs and closed the hatch door behind me. Naturally, we had already secured the jewels—Garnag had insisted that we get our pay before anything else. Still, asking for ten minutes before they poked their heads out of the cabin might buy us five to make good our departure.

"Bravo," said Garnag sarcastically. "Quite the performance." My face burned with embarrassment under my concealing cowl.

"Let's just get out of here," I growled.

* * *

It took us another three days to get back to Sanctuary from Shiteholme. I had insisted that we stay behind and make sure that the ex-slaves made good on my suggestion to take the ship back to Winterhold. Once they arrived at the small city, Garnag and myself watching from our rowboat a good distance off, we had turned and come into the fisherman's dock a few hours later to avoid suspicion. I knew that the Stormcloaks hated slavers as much as the Imperials did, so the prisoners would be dealt with fairly by the local authorities.

Once we took our horses from the stables—which were barely attended thanks to the excitement of a ship full of former slaves coasting into port—we took the scenic route home. It was cold out, but the rains had finally stopped, so a couple of nights of camping out along well-traveled roads was a welcome change from hiding in brush and gullies.

I had no nightmares. Not about Sullian Crito, and not about Rolff Stone-Fist.

When we reached Sanctuary and stabled our horses in the concealed stables nearby, Garnag patted my shoulder.

"Good job, kid," he said simply before turning and walking toward the Black Door.

As we walked through the Black Door together, greeted by our family like conquering heroes, I thought I could see new faces among the small gathered crowd. I no longer feared the change that the future would bring. Whatever happened, I was strong enough to face it. More than that, I welcomed whatever tomorrow might bring.

I thought of Hecate's last words to me before I left a week ago. I knew she didn't love me in the same way I loved her, but I could wait. I had taken my first steps on the road to being a man. She would see me in time, and my feelings for her would always bring me home safely from a contract. I had someone to live for—someone I had to grow up for.

* * *

…_to be continued…_


	15. Chapter 15: Crowded House

**Chapter 15: Crowded House**

What a difference a year makes. What a difference three months makes.

It was my second New Life Day as a member of the Dark Brotherhood, three months after my first successful mission as an assassin. In that time, I had proven myself worthy of holding a blade in the Night Mother's name, found a new friend in Garnag, and grown several more inches. I was a different person than I had been at my first New Life Day—no longer a callow, sheltered child, but a young man.

If only I could convince Hecate of it.

"By the Divines, Aventus!" she laughed as I came striding into the main room for our New Life Day dinner. "I still can't believe how tall you are. Much longer, and you'll be taller than me."

"That's only because you're so short," I retorted snappily. She snorted at me and stood up to ruffle my hair. I endured the treatment only because it was Hecate, but I couldn't help but blush from the gesture. It made me feel childish.

"Are you sure you're an Imperial and not a Nord?" Babette asked sleepily. I looked over at her to see a small smile on her heart-shaped face. I smiled back and walked over to hug her briefly. I had gotten over most of my attitude problems since being sent on contract for the first time, and the two of us had become close again, if not as close as those first few months in Sanctuary. I was still too aware that she was hiding things from me to fully trust her, but I had decided that Babette's friendship meant more to me than any secret she was hiding.

"No more than you are," I said with a sly smile, breaking the embrace. She had the good grace to look sheepish and turned away. Hecate, Nazir, Cicero and Meena all laughed at the joke; they knew the truth about Babette, even if they hadn't chosen to share it with me, and they knew that she was keeping it secret from me for reasons of her own.

The new members of the Brotherhood chuckled along, though more to be polite than anything else.

I sighed a little inwardly, scanning the group. It seemed like every time I went out on contract anymore, the Brotherhood had gained a new member or two by the time I came back. Unless someone was hiding out, it looked like we had stabilized at three in three months.

"We have a new sister for the new year!" Hecate gushed. "Isn't that exciting, Aventus?"

So four then. Wonderful.

It wasn't that I objected to new members of the Dark Brotherhood. I had been the group's second recruit after the fall of Falkreath Sanctuary, and that got me some amount of fame among the new recruits. My early worry that people would disdain me for being "just a kid" had died quickly. Knowing that Babette and I were both full members, blooded and tested, had dispelled any vocal prejudice. Kicking a few butts in sparring practice and buying the drinks at Dawnstar's single tavern had gotten rid of the rest. I could actually afford to do that sort of thing now that I was making coin from my contracts instead of giving Cicero every last septim.

My only difficulty was that four new members in three short months made for a very crowded Sanctuary. If we kept recruiting at this rate, we would have to reopen one of the old Sanctuaries—and that did worry me, since it meant that one of the existing members of the Brotherhood would be sent away to lead it as Speaker. While I had done my best to get to know the new people, the ones who had been part of the Brotherhood when I joined—plus Garnag, who had been an assassin since long before I was born—were the ones I considered my closest family.

"New blood?" rumbled Garnag from behind me. He was shaking snow off his boots as he tramped down the stairs. I saw Nazir give him a sharp look, which made him turn around and go back up to the top before taking his boots off. "Sorry, sorry," he said good-naturedly. "Just forgot with the excitement of a new sibling."

"Where is she?" I asked, looking around the main room.

The long dining table, which had seemed so empty even with all of us sitting at it a year ago, was now surrounded almost to its full length. Hecate sat at the head of the table, befitting her position as Listener, while Cicero sat at her left hand. The Fool of Hearts looked more morose than he usually did during the holidays, though he had seemed somewhat under the weather all season. I chalked it up to not getting to leave Sanctuary for a while; last year, he had nearly died from pneumonia, and I imagined that he didn't want to go through it again.

Nazir sat to Hecate's right hand, an honored position for the Speaker of the Dark Brotherhood. It was a position that mattered more now that there were more of us. It had been largely honorary before, but Nazir was a busy and important person now that there were almost a dozen assassins to coordinate for missions all over Skyrim. Babette had taken her usual place next to Nazir, saving a seat for me so that the two of us could sit together during meals.

Meena, the last remaining member of the Brotherhood, had been recruited right before me, but she was the one that I knew the least in most ways. I thought she was funny, if a little cruel and bloodthirsty, but she and I had never spent much time together. She was sitting where she usually did—next to Cicero. As I had grown cannier about people, I had started to suspect that Meena was interested in Cicero in more than just a "he's amusing" sort of sense. Of course, the jester had eyes only for Hecate, but that didn't stop the Khajiit from trying to get his attention every chance she could.

While Meena had been an oddity among my adopted siblings, she was no longer the only nonhuman member of the Dark Brotherhood. Hecate had broken the elderly orc Garnag out of prison, where he had languished over a decade since being captured during the fall of the Brotherhood back in Cyrodiil. He and Cicero had been close friends at one point; they still seemed overjoyed to see another again after so long, but I sometimes got the impression from Garnag that Cicero was not the same man as the one he used to know. Garnag and I had become surprisingly close too. He had been my backup on my first contract, and my partner on three more. He usually sat near the end of the table, content to take the spot closest to the fireplace and furthest from the babble of conversation.

The new Brotherhood members were sitting on the left side of the table, past Meena. They seemed mostly content to be relegated to sitting together as "the new blood," and it had given me good opportunities to engage all three of them in conversation since they were basically across the table from me.

The one I knew best so far was Deesei, an Argonian female. Hecate had told me that she had gotten our notice by killing a guard in Riften who had pushed her too far. She was the best tracker in the Brotherhood by far, and her hunting skills had been an invaluable way of adding fresh meat to our diets. She was also one hell of an unarmed fighter; if I'd had to bet on a brawl between Deesei and Meena, I would lay money on the Khajiit only because of how ruthless Meena was. I also liked Deesei because I felt comfortable around Argonians, and she reminded me a little of a friend who had died long ago.

I hadn't gotten to know either of the new elf recruits that well—not because I didn't like elves, but because they were nearly inseparable most of the time. Vedave Sendal was a Dunmer and Anaril Telind was an Altmer; while their two sub-races of elves were traditionally rivals, the two male mer had bonded swiftly.

I understood that they had known each other before the Brotherhood, having both been kicked out of the College of Winterhold after some "unfortunate accidents." Vedave had killed a rival during a demonstration, and Anaril had frozen a wing of the school in a solid block of ice. Between the two of them, I had decided that Anaril's accident really was one but that Vedave had just been sloppy about committing a murder. They were reserved, like most mer, but they had never been rude or snotty toward me.

"Still hiding out in the sleeping quarters, I think," Nazir rumbled. "I'll go get her. Not that I don't already have a meal to finish preparing…"

He got up with a testy look on his face. Nazir had seemed more and more irritable over the last few months, but I couldn't get him to open up about it. I had hoped that a few post-feast drinks might make him more willing to talk, but in the meantime I wanted to make things go well for the holiday.

"Don't worry about it, Nazir," I said cheerily. "I'll go find her. You just check on the roast, okay? If it's half as good as last year, these new bloods won't know what hit their taste buds." That actually got a small smile out of the old Redguard, and I was whistling to myself as I trotted off to the common room.

Sanctuary's layout is a confusing maze of tunnels, stairs, and chambers, but the common room was close to the entrance and easy to find, even if you were drunk when you came in—like Meena often was. Even with four new bodies taking up space, we had plenty of beds. I had gotten used to only sharing my living space with Garnag and Meena, though; adding extra people made it feel more crowded than it really was. Privacy was impossible in the common room, so most of the recruits only used it to store their possessions, sleep, and chat during downtime.

When Hecate had said we had a new sister, I wasn't sure what I would find in the common room. The only other women in the Brotherhood were Hecate herself, Babette, and Deesei, none of whom were exactly normal. Given the back-to-back recruitment of two elves, I was half-expecting a Bosmer to round out the group. What I saw in the common room was no Bosmer, though.

The woman sitting on the edge of one of the bunks was a slight, brown-haired slip of a girl, maybe four or five years older than me. As I stepped into the room, she looked up at me nervously, as though she were expecting a blow. Her eyes were large and brown, almost mouse-like. She gave off an appearance of delicate innocence totally unsuited for an assassin.

I was suspicious immediately.

Cicero was a fool in some ways, but he had been an excellent teacher in the arts of stealth and infiltration. One of his first lessons had been that it was good to not stand out, but that it was better to be seen and dismissed. Giving off an impression of weakness or incompetence was a valuable tool for any assassin. Despite my occasional resentment of my own youth, it had been a valuable tool in getting close to two of my targets so far. So when I laid eyes on a woman who looked more like teenaged nursemaid than a hired killer, my danger senses went off.

"Hey, we're getting ready to have dinner," I said cheerily. "You should come join us. I'm Aventus, by the way." The response was so low that I wasn't sure she had actually said anything at first. I took a few steps closer and said, "Sorry, what was that?"

"I'm Eiruki," the girl said at a volume that was barely above a whisper. Her voice squeaked slightly as she spoke, as though she were struggling to force out the words through a constricted windpipe. Had she suffered some sort of throat injury in the past? She was wearing a traveling dress with divided skirts and as she shifted uncomfortably under my gaze, she exposed a pale calf. Her posture was hunched, with her hair falling into her face, so I couldn't tell how tall she was.

"Eiruki, huh?" I asked to make sure that I was pronouncing it correctly. She nodded timidly in response. "That's a Nord name, right?" Another timid nod. I slowly walked toward her, keeping my smile steady. Whether or not it was an act, approaching an assassin for the first time was a lot like approaching a wild animal—no sudden movements, no loud noises, no threatening gestures.

"Well, Eiruki," I said, coming to a stop in front of her, "it's a pleasure to meet you. Welcome to the family." I held out a hand to her, either to shake hers or to help her up, when she suddenly jumped up off the bed and wrapped her arms around me. I thought for a second that I had made a misstep somewhere and that she was attacking me, but then I realized that she was hugging me.

I froze in total panic.

Eiruki was as tall as me, so she was short for a Nord woman. The initial impression of softness that she had given while sitting down was only reinforced now that she was holding onto me. In point of fact, I estimated that she was much softer than Hecate; she was also pressed against me much more firmly than the Listener ever had been in one of our infrequent hugs. Under her thin traveling dress were curves like none I had ever personally felt before. She was embracing me so tightly that it felt almost like she had been layered onto me. Her hair smelled like fresh mountain flowers.

Not knowing what else to do, I returned the hug awkwardly. I could feel the blood leaving my brain and rushing to other parts of my body. I was embarrassed enough that I wanted to break Eiruki's embrace, but at the same time I was having trouble thinking clearly enough to figure out exactly how to accomplish that. Eiruki laid her cheek on my shoulder and her breath tickled my neck.

"Thank you for the welcome," she whispered directly into my ear. My hair almost stood on end, and a shiver passed through me from head to toe.

"What's taking so long?" Babette complained as she walked into the common room at just that moment. "Nazir is getting ready to serve the-" She stopped cold as she saw the two of us standing together, my arms wrapped around Eiruki's back with her face upturned toward mine. Eiruki looked back at the sound of Babette's voice, a sheepish and frightened look on her face. She bit one lip nervously and pressed herself up against me more closely. Until that moment, I hadn't realized it was even possible for her to get any closer.

Babette's face underwent a subtle transformation at the sight of us. Her eyes narrowed a degree, her mouth turned down ever so slightly, and her posture stiffened. None of it alone would have been noticeable, but taken together it gave her the demeanor of an animal tensed for a fight or flight response. I had a sudden mental image of Meena hissing and raising her back fur.

"I see you're busy," she said coldly. "I'll just go back and let Nazir know you'll be a few minutes." With that, she spun on one heel, sniffed loudly, and strode out of the common room.

I started to reach for her, saying her name, but Eiruki hadn't let go of me. My feet tangled together and we toppled forward. Eiruki gasped as we fell and threw her arms wide to brace the fall. My hands unclasped from her back, and I pinwheeled them trying to stay on my feet. The two of us went into a heap on her bed, my hands slamming into the mattress on either side of her.

Somehow, we had fallen so that she was on her back with her legs splayed out, me lying directly on top of her. I had barely stopped my fall before crushing her under me, but my arms were held out so wide that my face was less than an inch from her heaving chest. I looked up toward her face; one of her hands was curled up near her chin and she was biting the knuckle of her index finger lightly, as though to stifle a scream.

I started to babble apologies, trying to shift my weight so that I could get to my feet without flopping onto her completely. She shifted too, writhing back and forth on the mattress under me in a way that was quickly derailing my efforts to stand up. I didn't know if she was trying to get away from me or just make it easier for me to stand up, but she wasn't succeeding at either of those things.

Finally, I managed to get to my feet and back away, waving my hands in front of me frantically as if to ward off her inevitably counterattack. She half-sat up on the bed, her knuckle still between her lips and bracing herself with her other hand. She slowly slid her legs closed, the cloth of her dress rustling as fabric rubbed fabric. I continued to babble, right up until she suddenly sprang off the bed and ran out of the common room.

Watching her back disappear through the open doorway leading toward the main hall, I wasn't exactly sure what had just happened or how it had spiraled so disastrously out of control. All I knew was that Babette was angry at me again, I had managed to offend Eiruki when she was just trying to be friendly, and it would be a few minutes before I could join the others for dinner.

That was just the beginning of my problems with Eiruki.

* * *

Somehow I managed to get through New Life Day. It was awkward and painful, but I managed.

By the time I had returned to the main room, Babette had moved from her previous position next to Nazir to a chair on the other end of the table near Garnag. Eiruki was sitting on my side with empty chairs on either side of her. I realized with an inward groan that she had taken the spot right next to where Babette had saved a seat for me, probably without realizing anyone was there. Given that she had two empty seats on either side of her, it looked like she was just trying to keep from being too close to anyone.

I would have just sat down next to Nazir, but Pavot had climbed up into the seat vacated by his mistress. When I tried to make nice with the nearly full-grown ice wolf, he snarled at me. I could only guess that he somehow knew that his mistress was annoyed with me and was taking it personally. I was so shocked at Pavot's behavior that I plopped down into my original seat, putting me right next to Eiruki. The Nord woman wouldn't even look at me, and when I glanced down to where Garnag was sitting, Babette was just glaring in our direction.

Cicero sat up and peered over the feast at one point to see Pavot leaning his muzzle up onto the table, his big blue wolf eyes staring at the repast. The jester started snickering and tossed a piece of meat to the ice wolf, who snapped it out of midair.

"It's like having old Arnbjorn back!" Cicero cackled, which drew frowns and glares from Nazir and Babette alike. Hecate shushed him, but the joke was in poor enough taste that it cast a pall over the head of the table. At least Nazir's cooking was all done by then so that he didn't burn anything in annoyance.

That was pretty much my New Life Day.

The one good thing that came out of it all was Hecate's gift to me. The Listener had provided me with a gift I didn't know how to use—a mandolin. She told me that it was kind of like an Imperial version of the lute that was so common among Skyrim's bards, and that she thought I might have a talent for music. I decided then and there that I would practice just as hard with the stringed instrument as I had with weapons and stealth.

The next couple of weeks saw Eiruki settling into life at Sanctuary. I did my best to avoid her without seeming too rude, but it's hard to avoid someone when you sleep in the same room and eat at the same table every day. The dead of winter was our slowest time of the year generally, so all of us were cooped up in Sanctuary for days on end with nothing to do except exercise, brag, and pursue our individual hobbies.

I spent a lot of time in the main room in front of the fire, waiting for a contract to come in and practicing the mandolin. It was very similar to a lute but had a rich soprano sound. Nazir had given me a pair of books about music for his New Life Day present; he and Hecate must have coordinated on their gifts. I had never imagined that there were so many varieties of stringed instruments, let alone the dozen variations on lutes that were used across the northern parts of the Empire. My own mandolin was an eight-stringed model with a bowl-shaped body, what my ancestors back in Cyrodiil would have called a "mandore."

Learning the intricacies of musical notation was far more difficult than learning the ins and outs of knife fighting or infiltration. I was good at learning practical skills—things that I could watch someone else do and then copy—but it was tough for me to grasp abstract learning. No one else in the Brotherhood knew anything about music besides Cicero, and his own talents ran toward lyrics and improvisation rather than notation or composition. I also didn't have the desperation that was driving me when I learned to read and write back at Honorhall. Half the time during that first couple of weeks, I felt like I was trying to read the dragon script that Hecate had books full of in her personal library.

Still, when things were going well, I could almost lose myself in the sounds. It wasn't music yet, just random notes that sometimes sounded less terrible than smashing a lute on a stone floor. There were plenty of jokes after dinner about it too.

"Ho ho ho, and hee hee hee," Cicero would cackle while capering in front of laughing assassins, "break that lute across my knee!"

It was kind of funny the first time. By the tenth, it was starting to wear on my nerves. By the twentieth, I had decided that perhaps the main room wasn't the correct venue for my forays into the performing arts. With a mocking bow, I gathered my books and mandolin, and I took off for one of the sealed rooms.

The thing about Dawnstar Sanctuary is that it's bigger than it seems. There are dozens of rooms that are unused, including a vast cavern network connected to Sanctuary by a tunnel that was normally kept blocked off by barricade. Ever since Cicero had come back from one of his explorations into the supposedly forbidden areas of the underground, though, I had been intermittently cataloguing some of the unused rooms. Babette and I would sometimes play hide-and-seek in the sealed portion of Sanctuary; it was the only game I could regularly beat her at.

Grabbing one of the lanterns from the supply closet, I pushed my way past the barrier—which was really little more than a bunch of boards laid across the tunnel opening with a sign that said "Keep out!"—and entered the dark chambers beyond. I could have just set down in the big chamber beyond the barrier, but I wanted to make sure that I was somewhere that no one would hear me.

The place was freezing cold and I rapidly found myself wishing I had brought a coat along. As I was looking around for a likely place to set up my books—though really, I would have just settled for a room that still had furniture that hadn't been completely devoured by termites—I suddenly heard what sounded like a titter of laughter from nearby. I spun and looked around, peering into the shadows and bringing up my lantern to shed light.

The shadows moved.

My hand went to my belt for the knife I always kept on my side whether I was in Sanctuary or not, only to find an empty sheath. I looked down in disbelief, and the sound of footsteps retreated away from me, deeper into the forbidden tunnels. Someone was playing games with me. I knew there was no way that any outsider could have gotten past the Black Door, so it was surely one of my siblings. A tight smile pulled at my face as I realized that it had to be Babette, pulling some sort of prank to get back at me for New Life Day.

Well, if that's the way she wanted it, I would oblige.

I put my mandolin and books gently down on a sturdy-looking table, hefted my lantern, and dashed off after the footsteps. The shadowed figure led me on a merry chase, through desolate corridors and empty chambers that echoed with the passage of years. Sometimes I heard a faint girlish giggle or distant clatter, but for the most part I never laid eyes on her at all. I could only wonder how Babette had gotten so good since the last time we played hide-and-seek.

After nearly taking a full slide down an ice-filled tunnel somewhere down in the deep catacombs, I found myself in a broad galley with icicles dangling from the ceiling and a thick drift of snow and slush covering the floor. My teeth were chattering constantly and my skin was standing out in goosebumps. I was starting to get a little annoyed at Babette for leading me on such a merry chase.

That's when I heard the screams.

Whirling around, the lantern light reflecting across the icy walls, I found myself looking up a particularly large snow drift. Near the top, where the drift spilled over the lip of the upper gallery landing, was a sprawled, cloaked figure, scrambling backwards away from a huge, hunched humanoid. My blood ran colder than even the ice and chill around me as I realized that I was looked at the three-eyed, fanged face of a troll.

Trolls were common throughout Skyrim, preferring to live up in snow-covered hills and deep underground. Hecate had told me that there had been a troll lairing in the catacombs when she had first come to Dawnstar, but she had killed it. I could only guess that either the legendary troll ability to regenerate from death was even better than she thought, or that there had been more than one of the damned things down here.

I had never seen a troll before, only heard stories. The creature was just as vicious and horrifying as I could have imagined. It would have been nearly eight feet tall if it were standing upright, covered in stinking, shaggy fur. It roared like a saber cat and tore at its own chest with its wicked-looking claws. Spittle and foam flew from its mouth when it roared. I would have been a fool to fight such a creature, even in full armor and with weapons.

So naturally, I charged it.

With a scream of my own, I ran toward the beast to distract it from its prey. It looked up at me dumbly, its own roar dying in its throat from sheer surprise. Then its three eyes opened wider still and it roared a defiant challenge in response. It stepped past its intended victim and began building up speed for a full charge at me, loping in an almost crab-like fashion with its claws hands dragging the ground.

"Run!" I screamed at the cloaked girl.

As soon as she barrel-rolled to one side, I drew back my arm and planted my feet. The troll continued to charge at me and opened its mouth to roar again. When the creature opened its mouth, I screamed again and hurled the lantern as hard as I could before throwing myself out of its line of charge. My aim was true, and the lantern flew right into the beast's open maw. It bit down in anger and frustration, crushing the lantern and cracking its oil reserve.

The troll's head burst into vibrant flame as the oil sprayed out of its mouth and nose, mixing with the exposed flame on the wick. The fire rapidly spread across its greasy fur—and I can only imagine down its throat too, judging from the gargled cries it began emitting. The troll started clawing at its burning face but only succeeded in spreading the fire to its arms.

Instead of waiting to see if the fire would kill it, I grabbed the girl's hand and took off up the ice tunnel back toward Sanctuary. Without the lantern, it became pitch black as soon as I was out of range of the flickering firelight from the flaming troll. I was pretty good at retracing my steps in darkness thanks to Meena's training, but I was doing it at speed with a partner. Fortunately, my companion was able to keep up with me. Between her uncanny ability to move in the dark at my side and her freezing hand, I was even more convinced that it was Babette.

To be honest, even in the midst of fleeing for my life from a burning, angry troll, part of me was looking forward to rubbing it in her nose that I had saved her. However, the roar behind me told me that the troll wasn't dead yet, so I decided to save it for when we got back to Sanctuary.

When the two of us got back to the top of the ice tunnel, I started to duck toward the room I had come through but the girl pulled on my hand in the other direction. Given that I was trying to work on my trust issues with Babette, I followed along. We ran headlong onto a flight of stairs that ran up to a landing. The girl let go of my hand so suddenly that I went sprawling onto the floor.

The troll came around the corner in a sprint, still on fire but not dead. It screeched thinly before catching sight of my partner at the top of the stairs. The beast came bounding up toward us at full speed, taking the stairs two at a time. I screamed at the girl to run again, but she stood her ground. I admired the courage, though I didn't think it would do either of us much good while being digested by a troll.

Just as the troll reached a point about two-thirds of the way up the stairs, the girl whipped her arm back with my knife in her grip. Her hood fell away, revealing not Babette's dark-brown tresses but Eiruki's honey-brown ones. Part of me wasn't surprised; I thought that "Babette" had seemed awfully tall as we were running together. Still, whatever surprised I lacked at the revelation was replaced by total shock when she threw the blade with such precision that it went through the soft meat of the troll's ankle, right between the bones, and completely severed its foot.

The troll stumbled, its stump already beginning to seal over, but it wasn't able to recover in time to avoid falling. It hit the ground with a bone-cracking thump, its jaw driven into the stone floor with enough force to crack its fangs and make all three of its eyes bulge slightly. One of the beast's arms reached out for Eiruki almost blindly. With a look of casual disinterest on her face, she put one booted foot on top of the arm and then reached out for a pull chain on the wall.

When she grabbed the pull chain, a half-dozen solid steel spears burst from the floor at the doorway, running floor to ceiling in a split-second. The troll was pierced through by the metal spikes in three places—two of them jutting through its wide neck and the third piercing its arm. The troll's blood sprayed onto the stone floor and it writhed back and forth trying to break free of the penetrating metal.

To my horror, the troll wrapped its free hand around one of the bars and began to push. The bar bent very slightly but no further. The troll, dumb beast that it was, kept pushing at the unyielding barrier. Finally, with a sickening tearing noise, the troll's head simply ripped free of its shoulders. The headless body toppled backward, dangling from the arm that was still pinned, as the free hand flopped and spasmed with no brain to control it. As soon as the head was free, the torn flesh around the shattered spine began to knit together. For just a moment, I thought that the troll might even grow another head, but when the skin had completely covered the neck stump, the creature simply shuddered once more and then went still.

Eiruki just watched the whole thing dispassionately, her blank look of dispassion never changing.

"Well," I said, somewhat shell-shocked. "That happened."

And then she turned and threw herself on top of me, crying. I didn't know what to do, so I patted her on the back awkwardly and held her until the tears stopped. Even after that, she continued shaking for a long time. It seemed like hours down there in the dark, but it couldn't have been more than a few minutes before she finally spoke again. Her voice was so low and whispery that if her lips hadn't been at my ear I would never have heard her at all.

"I'm sorry I lost your knife," she said. "Do you hate me?"

I shook my head, at a loss for words. I didn't know how to reconcile the cold, hardened killer I had seen in Eiruki's actions when she killed the troll with the soft, warm woman laying on top of me with tears in her eyes and fear in her voice. Was it an act? Was she lying to me like Babette had always lied to me?

In the end, that's why I pushed her away.

"No, I don't hate you," I said, surprised to find that it was true. "But we need to get back to Sanctuary and let the others know this thing was down here. This wasn't the first one lurking down in these tunnels, and it might not be the last one. Let's go."

I stood up and helped her to her feet. Maybe I'm just weak, but when I led the way back to the surface, I didn't say anything about her holding my hand the whole way back.

* * *

Strangely, the idea of having to hunt horrible monsters through the depths of the catacombs beneath Sanctuary put everyone into a better mood. Nothing is worse for an assassin than boredom, and the lack of contracts and bad weather had been making everyone irritable since well before New Life Day. Hecate worried and mothered over me while everyone else was down below, hunting for trolls that might or might not exist, so I was pretty happy.

I managed to keep Hecate from yelling at Eiruki over the whole thing. Whether Eiruki was the frightened waif she seemed or the hardened killer I had seen beneath that façade, I genuinely didn't think she had meant me any harm down in the caverns. She was just trying to play a game. Maybe even to make a friend.

Though they didn't find another troll, everyone came back in a better mood and wanted to know all about what had happened. I summoned up all of my ability as a storyteller to make it sound more dramatic and less pants-wettingly terrifying than it really had been. I even managed to make Eiruki sound heroic for cutting a troll's foot off with a thrown knife by leaving out the part where it had been my knife and she stole it.

That night, after far more mead than I should have drunk and plenty of cheering and applause, I stumbled back to the common room to grab some rest. The whole place was already dark, the fire banked to bare embers that gave me barely enough light to even find my bed. After stripping off my shirt and boots, I was too exhausted to take off my pants and just climbed under the blankets, sure that I would fall asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

I was shocked to find someone already in my bed—someone naked and warm. I froze in place and then quickly tried to back away, only to have the stranger throw an arm around my waist.

"Aventus," came Eiruki's whisper-soft voice, "not that I mind… but what are you doing in my bed?" Her voice was slurred with sleep and fragrant with mead.

"I'm not in your bed, Eiruki," I said softly, trying not to wake anyone else up. "You're in my bed."

"Am I?" she asked, nuzzling up against my bare chest. "Sorry…" Before she could say anything else, I could hear faint snores drifting up from her open mouth. She had fallen asleep pressed up to me, her arm thrown over my side. All I could do was sigh and think about how mad Babette was going to be when she saw us like this. Then I stopped and thought about it; Babette would be up tonight, probably working in her lab all night, and she would have no reason to even come into the common room before dawn.

Even knowing that, I didn't think I was going to be able to get to sleep with a naked girl pressed up against me, but sometime before dawn I simply drifted off in Eiruki's embrace. She was gone when I woke up, leaving me to wonder if it had happened at all—though the shy smile and blush she got when I came down to breakfast let me know it hadn't been a dream.

Clearly, I didn't understand women at all.

* * *

…_to be continued…_


	16. Chapter 16: Old Friends

**Chapter 16: Old Friends**

"I just don't understand women," I complained to Nazir as the two of us rode side-by-side.

"And you never will," he replied, laughing.

Springtime was still on its way, but the weather had become warm enough to brave the long roads of Skyrim by the first week of First Seed. We were both wearing heavy cloaks in case of rain, though our hoods were thrown back as we took the roads south toward Whiterun. The sun had just started to poke its way out of the clouds for the first time in days, which I took as a good omen for our trip.

Nazir was mounted up on his grey gelding, Sirocco; I had finally put together enough septims to afford my own horse, a dappled brown mare I had named Spot. Babette had laughed about it, of course, but I was terrible with names and didn't feel like taking Hecate's advice to just call it "Number One." I sometimes got the impression that before being given Shadowmere, the black demon steed that had been a Brotherhood fixture for centuries, she'd had trouble with horses, but she would never talk about it.

Truthfully, I probably could have afforded a horse sooner, but I hated spending money. Unlike most of the Dark Brotherhood, I didn't lead an extravagant lifestyle—I didn't go out to inns to eat regularly, or drink heavily at Dawnstar's local tavern, or buy expensive clothes. My only hobby was music, and I was still learning that. I suppose that spending money instead of hoarding it just didn't come naturally to me. I still remembered all too keenly the pain of watching my coins bleed away while I struggled to make ends meet. Even now that I was making decent money taking contracts for the Brotherhood, I preferred to just stuff my money into a hole under my bed rather than spend it on things.

Still, after several weeks with nothing to do, I was happy to spend the septims on a horse just for the chance to accompany Nazir on errands. It wasn't a proper contract; we were just going to Whiterun so that Nazir could check up on some of his contacts there and arrange new ones. Now that the Brotherhood was rebuilding, we had to increase our presence in the courts and cities of the province—which meant sending the Speaker to make contact and spend money.

Nazir hadn't wanted company at first, but Hecate had insisted that he allow me to come along when she remembered that I had never been to Whiterun before. Nazir grumbled about it, but he had finally given in. I liked to think that the week we spent on the road together had changed his mind about it too. As I had learned from having Garnag along as backup on several contracts, having someone to watch your back was a comfort even outside of a mission. Two sets of hands made camp work lighter, and two pairs of eyes made trouble on the road less likely.

I had wanted to talk to Nazir about my problems since Frostfall, but it had always seemed like it wasn't a good time. Between his general irritability of late, one or the other of us being on contract, or how crowded Sanctuary had become in the last six months, it seemed like I hadn't been able to get a moment to just talk to Nazir in forever.

When I had originally come to join the Dark Brotherhood, Nazir had been the one who set my training schedule, gave me good advice about the assassin's life, taught me basic math, and all sorts of other things. Now that he was formally working as the Speaker of the Dark Brotherhood—and there was a Brotherhood that was bigger than a half-dozen social outcasts living in a hole in the ground—he was a busy man. Going on a long trip together had seemed like a perfect opportunity to have his sole attention for a little while.

I knew that I was awkward with people. In recent months, I had become far more keenly aware of just how awkward I was. It seemed like I was always making Babette angry at me somehow, or getting Eiruki near tears without realizing how. And worse, I still seemed like I was no closer to my goal of making Hecate see me as a real man, despite months of wielding a blade in the Night Mother's name.

Not that wild mammoths could have dragged that last one out of me, even to Nazir.

Unfortunately, being awkward with people still applied to someone I felt as close to as Nazir. It had taken me all week just to work around to the one topic I really wanted to bring up.

We had made small talk about my recent contracts for much of the first three days, eventually turning to general gossip about the family for the next couple. We passed a pleasant day with Nazir talking about cooking and me talking about the progression of my musical talents. It was only on the seventh day out of Sanctuary, with Whiterun only a few hours away, that I had finally worked up my nerve enough to talk about the one thing I had really wanted to talk about: women.

I couldn't deny that my feelings were a little stung by his response, but I pressed on as best I could.

"Do you understand women?" I pushed, hoping for something that wasn't one of Nazir's famous sarcastic remarks.

"Aventus," he said, taking a moment to gesture expansively at the world around us, "women are like the sea and the sky. A man can spend his whole life trying to understand them, only to find that there are still surprises in store. An ice princess can have depths of warmth and compassion that you can only glimpse, while a peaceful matron can slit throats with a smile when pushed to despair." He shook his head and laughed again. "Men are simple. It's one of the reasons I prefer to work with them. I don't like surprises."

"So…" I started, only to have Nazir interrupt.

"Let's just cut to the chase, shall we?" he said. "You're having girl troubles, right?" I nodded sheepishly. "Eiruki or Babette?"

"Both, sort of," I replied.

"Sithis grant we should all have that sort of trouble!" he laughed. He paused and looked at me critically for a moment. "Have you and Babette talked about…" He trailed off, but his meaning was clear enough.

"No," I said tensely. After a year and more in the Dark Brotherhood, I still didn't know whatever secret Babette was keeping from me. I was pretty sure she wasn't a Dwemer construct, though. I was beginning to understand that whatever her secret was, it had something to do with the fact that she was almost never awake during the day and didn't seem to be growing up like I was. I just couldn't figure it out on my own.

"That is trouble, then," he murmured. "All I can say is that you're in for some big decisions over the next few years, Aventus. But the thing to keep in mind is that no decision is final, except the one that gets you killed. As long as you stay alive to fight another day, everything else is negotiable."

I nodded, and if Nazir was going to say any more, he didn't get the chance. We both fell silent as we came around a bend in the road to see Whiterun a few miles ahead. The city sprawled across the face of a low mountain, surrounded on all sides by rolling fields, farmhouses, and roads cutting across the center of the province. I whistled a low note at seeing the city for the first time. From a distance, it was impressive as hell.

* * *

As Nazir and I walked through the great gates of Whiterun, having left our horses at the stables outside the city walls, I could only think of how disappointed Hecate would be if she saw it now.

"You'll love it there, Aventus!" she had said excitedly. Her eyes got a distant look, the kind she sometimes had when thinking about her life before the Brotherhood. "It's the finest city in Skyrim except for Solitude. Nothing like drab old Windhelm." Her descriptions of the majestic rise of Dragonsreach standing over the Wind and Plains Districts had captured my imagination.

Now, the mighty walls were cracked and scarred from the battle a year past where Ulfric Stormcloak's rebel army had seized the city in the name of their glorious revolution. There were still war-barricades set up on either side of the main road into the city, their heavy logs covered in spikes and pitch. A major Stormcloak encampment had been set up just outside the city walls, replacing the Khajiit caravans that Hecate had described with fond recollection.

How very like the Stormcloaks to turn everywhere they went into just another Windhelm.

Many of the homes in the Plains District bore the scars of the battle, and some of them were boarded up and abandoned rather than repaired. I could only guess that the Stormcloaks had run off any citizens they didn't consider "pure enough" by their standards, or that anyone who still believed in the Empire had left willingly. I could at least grant that most Stormcloaks weren't murderers; when they took a city for Jarl Ulfric, they gave all of the local jarl's court and the city's noncombatants the chance to leave rather than submit to Stormcloak rule.

"Hey!" said a Stormcloak soldier angrily as he came stalking toward us. He was pointing at Nazir. "I thought I told you that you're not allowed here. Turn around and go back the way you came."

"Excuse me?" Nazir drawled languidly, his narrowed eyes the only sign of his annoyance. "I think you must have me confused with someone else. My apprentice and I," he gestured toward me, "have only just arrived in the city."

The Stormcloak paused and removed his helmet to get a better look at Nazir. He was tall and ginger-haired, with a face full of freckles and a gap in his teeth. My heart plummeted into my boots when I recognized him as Lasskar Deep-Water, who I had last seen when he was trying to kill me at the behest of a local neighborhood bully named Haakig. I prayed to Sithis that he didn't recognize me—I had changed a lot physically since the last time he had seen me—but I had no such luck. His eyes widened as he looked at me.

"Aretino?" he asked in faint surprise.

"You recognize my apprentice?" Nazir asked, nudging me slightly with one elbow. I nodded at him and scrambled to remember the cover stories we had come up with before leaving Sanctuary. I would have to use my real name instead of the fake one that I had picked, but all of the other details could stay the same.

"It's all right, Sirann," I said to Nazir, using his most common alias. "Lasskar and I are old friends from Windhelm."

"By Talos, Aventus!" Lasskar exclaimed, patting me on one shoulder. "After you vanished, the rest of us were scared that Haakig might have killed you and dumped you in the bay." He looked up at Nazir, who quirked an eyebrow at him. Lasskar blushed to his red roots and coughed into a curled fist. "Anyway, we all realized that it had gone too far and we stopped hanging around with him after that. Me and my brother joined up with the Stormcloaks a few months later, soon as they would take us. Glad to see you don't have any hard feelings."

"None at all," I lied with a smile. Truthfully, I wasn't angry at Lasskar or Vigurl; we had been friends, of a sort, before I was sent off to Honorhall Orphanage. It was only after I left that they had started hanging out with Haakig and his crew of racist bullies. It still hurt a little, but I found that it didn't hurt nearly as much as it would have even a year before.

Knowing that I could kill him before he even knew I had a weapon in my hand went a long way toward cushioning my hurt feelings too, I had to admit.

"Where's Vigurl?" I asked pleasantly, looking around as though Lasskar's twin would come strolling up at any second.

"With the army down near Falkreath," Lasskar said, shaking his head. "At least that's where he was the last time I heard from him. Mail's been spotty with fighting up and down the hold."

"I thought that Whiterun Hold got taken a year ago?" I asked as I started walking on, deeper into the city. Like I had expected, Lasskar started walking along with me, having totally forgotten that he had been trying to keep Nazir out of the city only a few minutes ago. Nazir followed along, keeping quiet.

"We did," he spat, "but those faithless Imperials have been running attacks behind the lines. They put little camps in the wilderness outside of our patrol lines and ambush supply caravans, murder our couriers, destroy food stores, that sort of thing. It's disgusting." I didn't bring up the fact that the Stormcloaks had done the same—and worse—in Imperial-held territories. "Because of that, I don't even know if Vigurl is…"

I nodded sympathetically. "Well, if my master and I get out that way, I'll see if I can't ask about him." Lasskar's desperate smile made me feel bad for the lie, so I coughed and gestured toward Nazir. "Lasskar Deep-Water, allow me to introduce Sirann al'Maliq, master trader of Hammerfell." Nazir gave a gracious nod toward the youth, who half-bowed in return.

"Sorry about before," Lasskar said sheepishly. "We've just been having some trouble with some men from Hammerfell lately, and-"

"We all look alike to you?" Nazir asked with a vicious smile. I groaned inwardly; while Nazir's sarcasm could be hilarious back at Sanctuary, it could offend people who weren't used to it.

"Nothing like that, sir," Lasskar said, his face cherry-red with embarrassment. "It's just really hard to see in these damned helmets. All I could really make out when I saw you was your garb. It's the same sort of stuff those guys were wearing." He squinted at Nazir again. "Actually, now that I can see you clearly, I guess it was a pretty dumb mistake. Those guys were wearing blue hoods, not red ones."

Nazir froze.

"You're certain of that?" he asked intently. "They were men from Hammerfell wearing blue hoods?"

"Yeah," Lasskar said. "They've been coming into town every couple of days to ask about some woman they're looking for. It got to be enough of a hassle for travelers that Jarl Vignar gave us orders to turn them away if they tried to come back into the city. Last time they tried, I heard them say they were going to head to Rorikstead." He laughed mirthlessly. "I hope the town guard there gets as much 'enjoyment' from their presence as we did."

"Thanks, Lasskar," I said just as we reached the steps leading up to the Bannered Mare, the inn that Nazir said we would be staying at while in the city. I shook his hand and nodded to him again. "If we happen to be in Falkreath any time soon, I'll ask about Vigurl."

Once the red-haired teen was out of earshot, I turned to Nazir.

"Blue hoods?" I asked. "Why is that important?"

"Because," he said with a frown, "it means that the Alik'r are in Skyrim."

* * *

Once we were safely tucked away into our spacious room, Nazir sat down on the edge of the bed. He started to pull his hood off before giving me a strange glance and dropping his hands back into his lap.

"Who in the name of Sithis are the Alik'r?" I asked. "And why should we care?"

"The Alik'r are nomad mercenaries," Nazir replied. "They're the most deadly warriors in Hammerfell, named for the Alik'r Desert in which they live." He started walking up toward the inn, his eyes troubled and his face downcast. "I used to be one of them." He paused and looked at me with a discerning glare. "How much history do you know, Aventus?"

"None at all," I said cheerfully. Nazir sighed; he had often complained about how gleeful the rest of us were about being so uneducated.

"Well then," he growled, "suffice to say that the Alik'r are dangerous people, and that they wouldn't appreciate seeing me again." I nodded, satisfied. That seemed like as good a summary as I needed. Nazir had been one of the most insistent of the Dark Brotherhood about not talking about what your life was like before joining. I wondered now if that was because he'd had more of a life before the Brotherhood than the rest of us.

"We should start getting unpacked," I said, tossing our saddlebags onto the room's lone table. "I figure that I'll spend tomorrow going around town and talking to shopkeepers to keep our cover story going. Do you think these Allikeers-"

"Alik'r," Nazir interrupted. I honestly couldn't hear the difference.

"Do you think these _people_ will interfere with your half of things?"

"Probably not," he admitted with a shrug. "I'm only concerned because it's unusual for them to be in Skyrim at all. It's a long way from the desert. I'm just grateful they're not looking for me."

"Lasskar said something about them looking for a woman," I pointed out. "Any idea who it might be?"

"Not really," Nazir said. "None of our business anyway."

"Well," I said, rubbing my hands together, "since it's nothing to us, no point worrying about it." I smiled broadly and got a return smile from Nazir, albeit a distant, wan smile. "So, is there anything in the budget for a nice dinner since we're actually staying at an inn for a change?" Nazir chuckled more sincerely this time.

"I swear, boy," he said as he stood up. "You'd eat the Brotherhood out of its last septim if I let you."

"I can't help that I'm a growing boy," I laughed back as the two of us started walking toward the door. "Blame your own good cooking for making me into a gourmet."

We were chuckling companionably as we walked into the hallway. If we'd been a few seconds sooner or later, we would have completely missed the barmaid who ran into Nazir headlong as she came around the corner. They both stumbled back, apologies on their lips, when they looked up at one another. Nazir took another step back, his hand dropping onto the hilt of his curved sword.

"Iman," he murmured.

The woman had bark-brown skin and short-cut black hair shot through with a few wisps of grey. She was wearing a low-cut barmaid's dress that showed off enough to demonstrate that she was still physically fit and trim despite being easily three decades older than me. Her dark eyes widened and her mouth opened as if to scream. Before she did, she took a step back and composed herself. It was an almost regal act.

"Nazir," she said calmly, even though her hands were shaking. "It's good to see you again." She looked him in the eye. "Are you here to kill me?"

"I should," he said, half-drawing his scimitar. I laid a hand on his arm, which drew an ugly look. After a long moment, he finally sheathed the blade and nodded. We both knew that our mission was only salvageable if we could shut this woman up—but quietly. Killing her in a hallway in the biggest inn in Whiterun was not that thing.

"How long have you been in Whiterun?" he asked coldly.

"A little more than three years," she said. "I came here just before the civil war started and wound up not being able to leave because of the border closing."

Nazir looked at her sharply. I knew that he had been through Whiterun a few times in the last couple of years on Brotherhood business. Had he not stayed in an inn during that whole time? I sighed; it made sense, given that Nazir was the only member of the Brotherhood as cheap as me.

"I take it you two know each other then," I said, trying to cut some of the tension.

"All too well," Nazir said without taking his eyes off the woman. "Iman here is the reason I was banished from my homeland." She flinched away from his gaze.

"By the gods, Nazir," she said, a tear trickling down her cheek. "I didn't know."

"What did you think would happen to me?" he said angrily, stepping toward her. I increased the pressure on his arm, afraid that he might still attack her out here in the open. "I helped you escape. You know what the price is for betrayal among the Alik'r. Did you really-"

A door opened further down the hallway and Nazir closed his mouth hard enough that his teeth clicked together. The Nord man who came out into the hall nodded pleasantly at all of us as he went toward the stairs. We all held our breath until he was out of sight, then let it out at the same time.

"Maybe this isn't the best place to discuss this?" I insisted, looking at each of them in turn.

"The boy is right," Iman said. "I have a room here. We can go there and discuss whether or not I die today."

She turned away from Nazir and paused for a moment. I couldn't tell if she was being brave or arrogant by turning her back to a potential killer. Nazir held back his obvious anger, though, and she began walking. We followed her through the inn to an upstairs room in a different part of the building from ours. She showed us in and closed the door behind us, making sure to throw the lock before sitting down on her bed. Nazir stayed standing, his arms crossed in anger.

I had a feeling that this was going to take a while.

* * *

There are times I hate being right.

I wound up not getting my expected hot dinner at all, instead dining on cold cheese and tough travel bread while Iman—who now apparently called herself Saadia—told her story of woe. Apparently, she used to be a noblewoman from Hammerfell when the province had fallen to the Aldmeri Dominion. I didn't understand all the politics, but her family had fallen out of favor when the Empire forswore the province to preserve the treaty with the elves. With most of her family disbanded or imprisoned, she had chosen to flee rather than be taken by the Altmer.

Ironically, the Altmer were driven out of Hammerfell a few years later, making them the only nation to ever win a war with the Dominion. Saadia couldn't go home, though. Fleeing in the first place made her a coward in the eyes of her own people. Even worse, since her family had Imperial ties, she would have been a reminder of the Empire's "betrayal" of the Redguards.

I couldn't believe it, but I was starting to feel some genuine sympathy for the Stormcloaks after hearing Saadia's story. Say what you would about the Nords, they would never have treated an ally the way that the Empire had treated Hammerfell. They had taken taxes and men for their legions for centuries, only to discard the Redguards when the fight had become too tough—and for Hammerfell to win against the Dominion anyway. It was no wonder Redguards had such a reputation as great warriors.

"I wasn't here looking for you, Nazir," she finally concluded at the end of her story. "I came here to get away from everything. The Empire's been falling apart for years since Titus Mede II took the throne. He threw our people away like so much trash!"

"Your people, you mean," Nazir retorted. "The Alik'r always held themselves separate from other Redguards." He paused, his tone softening slightly. "It seems we both wound up exiles in the end."

"Indeed," Saadia said, reaching out to lay a hand over Nazir's. "Truly, Nazir, I didn't mean for you to share in my fate. You were young. I thought they would go easy on you for helping me."

"Not young enough to not know the law of the sands," he said as he pulled his hand away from hers. He turned to me to explain. "The Alik'r are mercenaries. They have an absolute loyalty to whoever pays them, but that loyalty ends the moment that the pay stops. The rules that govern our—their—lives are called 'the law of the sands.'"

"Kind of like the Five Tenets of the Dark Brotherhood," I said before I could stop myself. Saadia looked at me curiously and Nazir frowned. "It's something I read about once," I covered as quickly as I could. Saadia was satisfied enough to not challenge it.

"My band was contracted by Saadia's family for extra hands to fight the Dominion," Nazir continued. "When the elves marched on Taneth, the capital of Hammerfell, the Alik'r were ready to fight to the death to honor their contracts."

"What my family didn't know when they decided to stay and fight," Saadia said, picking up the tale, "was that the elves had already worked out a deal with the leaders of the Alik'r. The elves took their time consolidating western Hammerfell, delaying the war effort for months while focusing their troops on Cyrodiil and Valenwood. It took long enough that the Alik'r contracts ran out."

"Then when the noble families went to renegotiate what should have been automatic renewals," Nazir said sourly, "they found that the Alik'r had already been paid off—by the Aldmeri Dominion. The elves offered them a fortune to just sit the conflict out, to not fight for either side."

"Sounds like easy money to me," I commented.

"It was easy money," Nazir admitted. "Too easy. We didn't know it at the time, but the Dominion had no intention of ever paying their side of the bargain beyond a pittance of a down payment. They thought that conquering Taneth would take the fight out of the Redguard people and let them turn their full forces on the Alik'r if they tried to raise a fuss about not getting paid." Nazir laughed bitterly. "They didn't realize how much my people loved money."

"So how did all of this get you exiled?" I asked. I figured that at this point, Nazir had just given up on not wanting to talk about things.

"It was my fault," Saadia admitted, her eyes downcast. "Nazir's band was attached to my family as estate guards. He and I were… friends." I looked between the two of them; given Nazir's own softer expression and Saadia's unwillingness to look at him, I thought they might have been more than that. Maybe I was finally starting to get better at reading people. "I asked Nazir to help me escape the Dominion's forces when they came to seize my family. I would never have gotten away if it weren't for him. It was all my fault."

"No, it wasn't," Nazir said with a sigh. "If I was old enough to know the law, I was old enough to make my own decisions." He shook his head. "Seeing you again brought back old pain, but I have a new life now. A purpose." He looked over at me and patted me on the shoulder. "A family."

"The boy is your son?" she asked, confused. "Was his mother an Imperial?"

"No, nothing like that," Nazir laughed. "I never had any children. Aventus is my…" He paused for a moment. In the end, he stayed with our cover story. "He's my apprentice. I'm a merchant now. Though around here they call me Sirann."

"After your brother?" she asked. Nazir nodded; I hadn't even known he had a brother. "How wonderful for you, Nazir," she smiled. "Much better off than me, I'm afraid." She gestured at her worn barmaid's dress. "I've been running for years, using up what remained of my family's money and selling the jewelry I was able to take with me just to survive. I hid out in Cyrodiil for a number of years, relying on old friends of my family to keep me hidden." Her face grew dark as she thought back.

"About a decade ago," she continued, "I caught wind of Alik'r warriors looking for me. My few remaining allies proved just as fair-weather as the Empire had to Hammerfell, and I fled the heartlands rather than wait for them to betray me too. They were just a step behind me for years, and I spent what was left of a fortune to throw them off the trail. I finally ran to Skyrim. My father always said that it was the furthest corner of the Empire."

"I'm afraid that you haven't run far enough then," Nazir said.

"What do you mean?" she asked, confused and clearly afraid. "You said you weren't of the Alik'r anymore."

"Not me," he replied with a shake of his head. "One of the Stormcloaks out near the gate said that some Redguards in robes like mine had been asking after a Redguard woman."

"By the Divines," she cursed. "I thought I was finally free of being hunted. I have nothing left. Even if the borders weren't sealed because of the war, I wouldn't have enough money to go anywhere. When I arrived in Whiterun, I was completely broke. I would have starved in the streets if not for the woman who owns this inn being kind enough to give me a job."

When she looked up at Nazir, her eyes were full of tears and her face tormented. I knew what she was going to ask before she even opened her mouth—and that Nazir would say no. She had used him and gotten him thrown out of his family, exiled from everything he had ever known. I had heard him say once that the Dark Brotherhood had given him a purpose again after hitting bottom. I couldn't imagine that he would do anything for this woman after going through so much for her once before.

"Will you help me, Nazir?" she asked, just as I thought she would. I sat back, smugly satisfied with my own cleverness, to wait for his inevitable refusal.

"Yes, Iman," he said with the most sincerity I had ever heard in the man's voice. "I'll help you."

I gaped at him, literally unable to believe what I had just heard. I pinched my own arm, just to make sure I hadn't fallen asleep while they were talking about boring politics. The pain let me know that I was awake, to my continuing horror.

"Nazir," I said through gritted teeth, "we have business to attend to." I stared at him, bulging my eyes out in a manner that I hoped conveyed the question "What in the Void do you think you're doing?"

"Naturally, you can go on about our business without me, Aventus," he said dismissively. As if that were possible. Not only did I not know any of Nazir's contacts—by name or by face—most of them were the sort of people who would slit throats rather than answer questions if someone besides the man paying them showed up.

"That's not really possible," I hissed. "Our clients will only talk to Sirann, remember?" He finally looked at me, as if realizing the last thirty years of his life had happened and that he was under an obligation to both Hecate and the Night Mother. He sighed deeply.

"I'm afraid my apprentice is correct," he said. At last, the Nazir I knew! "We really have to finish our business here before we can do anything for you. But that should only take a day or two."

I groaned and slapped myself in the forehead. It was going to be a long trip.

* * *

…_to be continued…_


	17. Chapter 17: In My Time of Need

**Chapter 17: In My Time of Need**

"Forget women," I grumbled as I pushed through yet another grime-coated underground tunnel. "I've decided that I don't understand anyone."

"Shush," Nazir cautioned, lowering his lantern so that its hooded glare was shielded from view. "I've already apologized for sidetracking us. What more do you want?"

"That apology in writing," I hissed. "And possibly performed as an interpretive dance in front of the Dark Brotherhood. With Cicero providing narration."

I didn't look at him, but I could feel Nazir glaring at my back. I didn't feel bad about it, though. I was just annoyed about the whole thing. If he didn't want me mad at him, he shouldn't have gotten us caught up in this ridiculous situation to begin with.

* * *

"It's insane!" I complained once Saadia had shown us back to our room and left. "Hecate wouldn't approve."

"Hecate isn't here," Nazir responded gruffly. "And I doubt she would have approved of you almost getting killed by a giant spider just to find a pet for Babette either."

"Babette told you about that?" I asked, feeling my face redden.

"I also doubt that she would appreciate you sleeping with Eiruki," he continued, ignoring my question.

"I'm not sleeping with Eiruki!" I protested. "She crawled into bed with me while she was drunk! Once! And nothing happened!"

"That's a shame," he said, looking at me with a frown. "I was lying about Hecate being upset about that, you know. I doubt she'd care if you took a tumble with a pretty girl closer to your own age and-"

"Why are we talking about this?" I interrupted. "We're supposed to be talking about how you're going to blow our mission so that you can help some woman you haven't seen in thirty years." I stomped over to the bed and kicked the frame in a fit of pique. I wheeled around to face him again, my voice raising in anger. "As far as I can tell, the last time you went out of your way to help her it didn't work out so well for you!"

Nazir was on me in a flash, his rough hands grabbing my shirt and pulling me up so that we were face-to-face. He was livid with fury, and I could tell that I had gone too far. I thought about reminding him of the Tenets, but I was a bit worried that might be too much like what Cicero would do—and reminding Nazir of Cicero while he was already mad was the last thing in the world I wanted. After a long moment, he finally got himself under control and let go.

"I'm sorry," he said grudgingly.

"Me too, Nazir," I returned. I wasn't really sorry, but I thought it was better to be diplomatic. "I shouldn't have said that. I guess we're both a little stressed out."

He nodded and sat down heavily in the room's lone chair. For the first time since I had known him, Nazir looked old and tired. He seemed to have aged five years in the couple of hours since we had run into Saadia. I sat down on the edge of the bed and did my best to keep my voice calm and level.

"Just help me understand here," I pleaded. "Are you still in love with her after all this time?"

"No," he insisted, shaking his head, "nothing like that. It's hard to explain." He reached up toward his hood and stopped short again. It was an unusual gesture; I had seen Nazir without his hood before, so I didn't understand why he would be reluctant to take it off in front of me. "I just…"

"You don't have to explain," I said, trying to spare Nazir from his obvious discomfort. "I just need to know that this isn't going to compromise our mission. We came here for a purpose, and we need to finish it before we worry about anything else."

"Agreed," Nazir finally conceded. "I had planned on taking a couple of days to speak to my people in the city, but I can do it more quickly than that. Then you can go back to Sanctuary and let Hecate know I'm taking some personal time to deal with…" He gestured vaguely. "…things."

"To the Void with that," I said sourly. "I'm going with you."

"Like hell!" Nazir started, but I cut him off abruptly.

"You're not thinking clearly, Nazir!" I half-shouted. "Saadia might be a woman in trouble who needs help, or she might be using you. We just don't know. You need someone along who isn't personally involved." I realized that I was standing with my fists balled up, so I forced myself to take a deep breath, sit down, and relax. "I'm just worried for you, Nazir. I've never seen you like this before, and I'm scared that if I let you go off alone, you'll get killed."

"I can take care of myself," he said, though not unkindly. "I've been doing that for a long time before you came along, Aventus Aretino."

"Maybe," I acknowledged, "but you're part of a family. That means you don't have to do it alone." I reached out and laid a hand over his. "I'm part of your family too, Nazir. I'm here and I want to help—even if I don't agree with you."

Nazir looked decidedly uncomfortable, finally patting my hand with his before standing up and walking to the window. I gave him a moment to compose himself before continuing.

"Take a step back from the personal part of this," I said. "Treat it like any other mission. What's the first thing we need to do?"

"Figure out who to kill," Nazir said. "Every problem can be solved with strategic murder."

"Okay, fair enough," I replied. "How do we do that?"

"The Alik'r never travel alone," he mused. "Where you see one, there are two. Where you see two, there are four." He began to pace back and forth, thinking aloud as he walked. "If they've been making this much of a nuisance of themselves, then they know that Saadia is somewhere in Skyrim—and they've probably narrowed her down to Whiterun if they're keeping a presence in Rorikstead. Tomorrow, while I'm talking to our contacts, I'd like you to go see your Stormcloak friend-"

"He's really more like an acquaintance," I groused.

"Well, tomorrow he's your friend," Nazir insisted. "You're so homesick that you asked your master for the day off to hang out with an old friend." I nodded, frowning; I knew what Nazir was getting at. "While you're hanging out with your old friend, ask him about the Alik'r and see if he has any more information. If we're lucky, we'll find out more about where they're located and how many they are. Worse come to worst, we'll hunt them down in Rorikstead and interrogate them."

"What if they've moved on?" I asked.

"They haven't," he said with grim certainty. "Alik'r never welch on a contract. The only way to get them off Saadia's trail is to kill the band that came here after her. That will give Saadia enough time to relocate. Hopefully, it will discourage any other bands from taking money to come after her. The Alik'r are tenacious, but they're also practical."

"Sounds like a plan," I said with mock cheer. "To show that you're sincere about that apology, you can have the floor tonight."

* * *

The next day, Nazir was already up and gone by the time I rolled out of bed. When I dressed and went downstairs for breakfast, I was happy to see Saadia working in the common room, serving breakfast to patrons and cleaning tables. Part of me had been worried that I would wake up to find Nazir having run off with her, and that wasn't an explanation I would have looked forward to giving Hecate. I gave the Redguard woman a cautious nod as I made my way out into Whiterun.

The city was cold and the streets were muddy from a light rain the previous night. I wound up waiting for almost ten minutes in the chilly morning air for a Stormcloak patrol to move on from the main gates before approaching to ask after Lasskar. Invisibility is an assassin's greatest weapon; Lasskar knew me already, but I didn't want to draw the attention of more Stormcloaks than I had to. Being an Imperial by itself could make some "true sons and daughters of Skyrim" hostile toward me. Asking pointed questions about recent troubles could make them worse than hostile, though—it could make them suspicious.

Fortunately, once the patrol had moved off, it was easy enough to find Lasskar on gate guard duty again. It seemed like the sort of thing that the laconic Nord would be suited for. Lasskar had always been the more peaceable brother. It really didn't surprise me that Vigurl had been sent on to active campaigning while Lasskar was put on something passive like guarding an ostensibly conquered city.

"Hey, Lasskar," I said as I approached the gangly teen. He had his helmet off and was rubbing at a faint bruise on his cheek. "Man, what happened to you?"

"Those damned Redguards came back," he said angrily. "One of them tried to sneak into the city last night just as I was coming on duty." He opened his mouth in a jaw-cracking yawn and shook his head to clear it. If he was pulling double shifts, the Stormcloaks must be as undermanned as all of Nazir's military reports had been suggesting.

"You're not too hurt, I hope," I replied. I found that I actually meant it too. Seeing him take a bruise was much less satisfying than I had thought it would be.

"Nah," he shrugged. "Took four of us to drag the guy down, though. He was cursing and screaming the whole time."

"Did you kill him?" I asked in what I hoped was a casual voice. I always worried that I sounded too eager when I asked things like that. Killing people was my business, after all.

"We're under orders to take prisoners whenever possible," he said in what sounded like a practiced tone. He was probably just parroting his orders back at me. "Since we didn't have orders otherwise, we knocked him out and locked him up in Dragonsreach. I don't guess anyone will pay his fine, so he's probably going to be up there until we can figure something else out." Lasskar laughed cheerfully. "I kind of hope that he stays up there until we finish taking the Reach so we can throw his ass in Cidhna Mine. That would teach him a lesson."

I laughed along with Lasskar even though I didn't really feel it. I had always thought that prison was a barbaric way to deal with criminals. Either fine them and let them go, or just kill them and be done with it. Prison was like slavery—and I didn't like slavers.

"So, did you need something?" Lasskar asked when we finished chuckling over the Alik'r warrior's likely fate.

"Well, I was going to ask you to lunch so we could catch up on what's been happening back home since I left…" Right on cue, Lasskar yawned again. "But I think you'd be better off catching some sleep instead of listening to me yammer about how much I miss Windhelm."

"Sorry, Aventus," he said with what sounded like genuine regret. "I don't get a day of leave for another week or two yet, and even that might get revoked depending on how things go in the Reach."

"No, it's okay," I said quickly, patting him on the back. "We'll catch up the next time I'm in Whiterun. I don't know how long I'm staying this time, but it's definitely not a couple of weeks. When all of this is over, I'll buy you a mead."

"I'll take it as a promise," he smiled, and waved as I walked back into town.

That had gone easier than I could have hoped. Truthfully, I was glad that I hadn't had to spend an hour or two trading insipid conversation with someone I used to know as a child. I could think of very few things more boring and awkward—and I was pretty awkward with people to begin with. While I might not hold any lasting grudge against Lasskar, I simply didn't have anything in common with him anymore—with anyone from Windhelm, really.

I wasn't a sad, lonely child anymore. I was an assassin of the Dark Brotherhood. I had a family and a purpose. I didn't need the approval of a gap-toothed private in a rebel army to feel good about myself. Still, I had trouble getting Lasskar's eager face out of my mind as I made my way through the Plains District. He seemed like he was genuinely looking forward to spending some time with me. I could only think that a year in the army had made him homesick, and I was a little piece of Windhelm in his mind.

I guess that time has a way of making even the bad memories seem good.

In the meantime, I had more important things to do. Getting in to see a prisoner at Dragonsreach would be tricky. I couldn't risk infiltration because I didn't know the layout at all; even being undermanned, the Stormcloaks wouldn't leave the place unguarded. Killing my way to the prisoner wasn't really an option either. It was even riskier than infiltration, and way louder. I didn't have enough money for a bribe…

But I knew someone who did.

* * *

The interior of the house was dusty and cobwebbed. The walls were covered in shelves and weapon racks, all crammed with bric-a-brac and souvenirs from all over Skyrim. There was a troll skull on a table, a jeweled and ceremonial-looking axe hanging above the door, and what looked like a barrel stuffed full of arrows next to the door. A few withered bundles of garlic hung from the ceiling over a cold fire pit with a rusty kettle hanging from a spit.

From the general dirt and disarray it was clear that no one had been inside for months, maybe longer. I would have to give Hecate even more disappointing news when I got back to Sanctuary, I supposed. Before I left Dawnstar, Hecate had given me the key to Breezehome, her old house in Whiterun, making it clear that we were only to use it in case of an emergency. I figured that needing bribe money to get to a prisoner so I could interrogate him about Nazir's old girlfriend didn't really qualify, but he could be the one to explain it all to her later.

When I had remembered the key, I had to wait almost an hour before making my way into the house. I didn't want anyone seeing me going into the Dragonborn's old house, which meant waiting until the streets were clear. Hecate had warned me that her old housecarl, a Nord named Lydia, might still be living there, which was why the place was off-limits except for an emergency. I had intended to dart in, grab a few coins out of Hecate's emergency stash, and dash back out, but the place was too interesting to just leave.

Once the door was closed behind me, I couldn't help but stare around in wonder for long minutes. Even dirty and dusty, the place was chock full of strange trinkets, obviously enchanted weapons, and dozens of books on every subject imaginable. I wandered slowly through the main room, pausing to look at each object in turn and wondering what amazing stories might lie behind each. It was only with great effort that I was able to tear myself away from the array of items and focus on my business.

It reminded me that it was with Hecate that I most felt the sting of the general prohibition against asking members of the Brotherhood about their lives before joining. While Babette kept secrets from me about the present, I had never begrudged anyone else their secrets about the past. I hadn't cared much for my life before the Brotherhood either, so I imagined that most of the others were much the same.

But Hecate was the Dragonborn! She had saved the world from Alduin, the World-Eater! She had never made a secret of at least that much, but she was as unwilling to talk about it as anyone else was about their own pasts. I had been learning songs and stories for much of the last few months. They fascinated me—the way that history lived on through legend and music—and Hecate was a living legend, a member of my own family no less. She had only told me about having had a friend named Lydia because she thought I needed to be ready in case the woman was still living in Breezehome.

A quick inspection of the place revealed that wasn't the case, though. Even if the general clutter hadn't let me know about the place's disuse, a quick sweep through the small house made sure of it. From Hecate's wistful remembrance, I had half-expected to find a Nord woman sitting in an upstairs chair, stock-still and covered with dust herself, but the house looked like no one had been inside in a long time.

Following Hecate's directions to find her hidden stash, I pulled up one of the floorboards near the bed and reached down into the hole, ready to get bitten by a skeever. Honestly, I didn't know why she would bother hiding a few septims when there were so many valuable things just sitting out in the house already. My fingers finally brushed against the wooden side of a chest. It was flat enough to fit under the floorboards, but when I tried to pull it closer it barely budged. I finally had to pull up a few more loose floorboards just to get at the thing.

When I finally uncovered it, I whistled a low note of envy and surprise. In addition to the chest I had touched, there were nearly a half-dozen sacks, saddlebags, and backpacks stuffed into the hollow under the floor. All of it was full to bursting with coins, gems, and jewelry; even the chest wouldn't quite close all the way. It was easily a king's ransom, all sitting in an unused house in a Stormcloak-occupied city. And it was only one of the caches of valuables she had socked away while adventuring as the Dragonborn.

I wondered briefly how true the "soul of a dragon" part of the Dovahkiin legend was. It would certainly explain the hoarding and the temper tantrums.

Shrugging it off, I grabbed what I needed out of the pile, put everything back into place, and made my way back downstairs. As I was heading to the door, a glint of metal caught my attention out of the corner of my eye. I turned toward one of the shelved, feeling a strange sense of familiarity. It took another minute or so of staring before I was sure of what I was looking at.

In the middle of one of the shelves, sitting on a display in a position of honor, was my family's silver dinner plate. I had given it to Hecate over two years ago as payment for killing Grelod the Kind. It was the only thing of value my family had owned, other than a large mirror my mother had owned and which I had left in Windhelm when I joined the Dark Brotherhood. Hecate must have kept it all this time, instead of selling it for coin as I had assumed she would when I gave it to her.

As I stared at the plate—which I now realized was worth much less than a contract—I could feel warm tears slowly trickling down my cheeks. I hadn't expected the Listener of the Dark Brotherhood, the Dragonborn of legend, to be so sentimental that she would hold onto a cheap dinner plate given to her by a lonely, starving orphan. Looking at it reminded me sharply of my mother's death, of my lonely year in Windhelm, of the pain I suffered in Honorhall Orphanage—and at the same time, it didn't feel all that bad.

I could only guess that time could make even bad memories seem good. Even for an assassin.

* * *

By the time I had composed myself enough to leave Breezehome and made it up to Dragonsreach, it was mid-afternoon. A few coins placed in the right guard's hand had gotten me in to see the Alik'r prisoner, with the claim that I was trying to determine if he was someone my master knew. My master didn't want to be directly associated with a criminal, of course, but were it to be a relation, he would have an obligation... and so on.

It wasn't a bluff that would have stood up to any sort of close scrutiny—I mean, what were the odds that a random Redguard merchant would know a random Redguard criminal—but the general Stormcloak racism had made it an easy lie to sell. Money never hurt for these sort of transactions either.

The sub-level of Dragonsreach housed a small prison with several small, sparse cells to hold drunks and ruffians for short term stays. It had none of the amenities one would expect in a long-term prison, like a courtyard for prisoners to mingle or exercise in, or some sort of hard labor to keep them occupied and exhausted. It also lacked a torture room; Nords generally didn't believe in torturing prisoners for information.

The guard pointed me to the correct cell—which was probably unnecessary since it was the only one with anyone in it—and then retreated to the corner of the room. I would be able to have a private talk with the prisoner, but I wouldn't be able to threaten him without drawing the guard's notice. I would have to soft play this one.

The prisoner himself was a clean-shaven, dark-skinned Redguard wearing the blue head wrap of the Alik'r. He didn't have the distinctive Redguard scimitar, of course, and his face was puffy from the beating he had taken at the hands of the Stormcloaks.

"Excuse me," I said, staying well of his reach should he decide to charge the bars, "but I hear that you've been looking for a Redguard woman." He looked up at me but his face remained unexpressive, like a carved wooden statue. "Her name is Iman."

He stood up and walked to the bars, looking around furtively. Now I had his attention.

"I will say that I was looking for such a woman," he said in a low voice, his eyes on the guard, "but no longer. I was captured, and that makes my life forfeit." He cast his gaze down shamefully. "My life with the Alik'r is over, but I have no wish to die in this gods-forsaken land. If I can be freed from this prison, I may start over. See to that and I'll tell you what you need to know."

"Not good enough," I replied. "Tell me where I can deliver my information and I'll have you set free. I need to know for certain there's a profit in it for me before I lay out any money for your release."

"There will be profit aplenty," he insisted, nodding to emphasize his point. "The woman betrayed our people to the Aldmeri Dominion in the Great War. She sold her family's secrets to the elves and cost the city of Taneth its freedom." He spat on the floor of his cell angrily. "Oh yes, that harlot's head will be worth a fortune."

I paused, a little stunned by his accusations. Could it be true? Saadia betraying the city's defenses could explain why she had gone on the run, and why her Imperial allies had turned cold on her if that information had come to light. On the other hand, if she had sold her people to the elves, why hadn't she just stayed behind and worked with them during the occupation? I decided that ultimately it didn't matter. I didn't have enough information, and Nazir clearly wanted to help her against all logic anyway.

"Well," I coughed, "I need to know who I'm going to be dealing with. Who's your leader?" This was an important question.

"A man called Kematu," he responded without hesitation. He paused, clearly thinking about how much to offer before being offered a reward. "Our band was lairing at an old cavern east of Rorikstead. The locals call it Swindler's Den." He held out a hand to me through the bars. "Now you will set me free?"

"I'll talk to the guards," I replied. "It might take me a day or two."

As I walked back to the guard, I tried my best to not let my worry show through and to make my steps slow and even. He hadn't shown any hesitation over calling Kematu his leader, which meant that he didn't think of himself as an exile. He'd had none of the bitterness of an abandoned warrior. Nazir had described the Alik'r as practical, even ruthless, but they had a code. It all led me to only one possible conclusion.

The man in the cage had gotten caught on purpose. He was no exile—he was a distraction for an Alik'r the guards had never even seen.

"Where you see one," Nazir had said, "there are two."

An Alik'r warrior was on the loose in Whiterun. He knew where Saadia was. And if I didn't get to her before he did, he was going to kill her.

* * *

I started running as soon as I got out the door. Part of me was worried that I would get stopped by a Stormcloak for being suspicious, but more of me was afraid that it was already too late. I had used up the whole morning and most of the afternoon gathering information. The Alik'r had already proven that they were ruthless and resourceful. I had no doubt that if one of them got within striking range of Saadia, he would take his shot whether it would get him caught or not.

If Saadia weren't already dead, she would be soon.

I raced through the courtyards around Dragonsreach for the great stairs that led down to the Wind District. I took the stairs two and three at a time, once drawing an angry shout from a well-dressed man I almost ran into. My legs and lungs were burning as I reached the central market plaza but I pushed myself harder and faster.

Crossing the central plaza of the district, I couldn't help but feel sorrow for the Gildergreen, the mighty tree that was sacred to worshipers of Kynareth, the goddess of nature. Hecate had told me of its beautiful leaves, how they sparkled in the sunlight like jewels, but now the tree was barren and leafless—another casualty of the Stormcloak Rebellion. The tree had been hit by a ball of flaming pitch flung by a careless catapult, and the scars of its burning still covered it. I had no time to muse over the dying tree, any more than I had time to appreciate Jorrvaskr, the mead hall of the Companions, which surmounted a small rise to my left.

Racing through the upper reaches of the Plains District, I nearly bowled over an elderly matron milling about near an outdoor vendor, leapt over a wheelbarrow that was being pushed by a whey-faced Nord, and ducked between a pair of carts delivering goods. I slipped in the muddy streets, keeping my balance only from a solid year and a half of training with the Dark Brotherhood.

Rather than taking the stairs or a path up to the Bannered Mare, I leapt over the retaining wall and scurried up the damp grass. By the time I reached the door, I was muddy up to my knees, sweating and shaking from exertion, and gasping for breath. I stumbled into the common room, drawing glances from the few patrons. I grabbed one of the barmaids and gasped out something incomprehensible.

"I'm sorry," she said in confusion, looking down at where I was holding her arm with distaste.

"Saadia," I managed to croak between shuddering breaths. "Where's Saadia?"

"Hmmph," the barmaid snorted, finally shrugging my arm off. "Lazy wench went out back an hour ago to feed the chickens. Probably sitting on her fat-"

But I was already gone.

I dashed through the Mare to get to the rear door, bowling over a Nord bard wailing about the "great honor" of Ulfric Stormcloak. I would have felt worse, but I couldn't stand that song.

Once outside, I looked around quickly and was relieved to see Saadia standing by the chicken coops, spreading handfuls of feed to the angry birds. I took a moment to wave to her, then hunkered down with my hands on my knees to let my dizziness pass. Maybe I had been worried for nothing.

The Alik'r warrior sprang out of the bushes at the edge of the Bannered Mare's property with barely a whisper of sound. His scimitar was already in hand, and Saadia was looking at me, lifting her hand in a friendly return wave. She would never get out of the way in time. I took to my feet and started running toward her, but I would never reach her before the Alik'r did.

"Get down!" I screamed, hoping that Saadia would obey without taking the time to look behind her.

Saadia froze for just a split-second, but it was almost too long. Then she dropped to the ground like a poleaxed cow, sprawling straight down into a heap. The Alik'r warrior's scimitar cut through the space above her head, whistling in the cold spring air. I put one arm behind me and drew my emergency dagger, spinning it around so that it was point-first ahead of me. I was a living spear, shooting through the air to my target as I leapt over Saadia.

The knife found the warrior's throat, pinning him through larynx and spine, coating my forearm with his blood. He wasn't even able to make a sound as he died.

When he hit the ground next to Saadia, her eyes widened and she would have screamed if I hadn't let go of the knife and clapped a hand over her mouth. I doubt that the blood on my hand helped her calm down, but I held her silent until it felt like she stopped and then slowly let her go. Her face was smeared with blood where I had kept her quiet.

"Divines," she whispered, shaking like a leaf. "You killed him."

"He was going to kill you," I said simply. "Would you prefer I had let him?"

She shook her head frantically. Sometimes it's just a matter of reframing the argument.

"Okay then," I said as I glanced around. Neither my shout nor the brief struggle afterward had drawn any attention. "Now help me hide the corpse."

* * *

Saadia spent the rest of the day in her room after telling Hulda, the owner of the inn, that she was feeling sick. I could only guess. Nazir went up to check on her when he got back and I told him what had happened. I kept myself busy in the common room while they talked. I had to admit that I was a little shaky myself—not so much from killing a man as from almost letting Saadia get killed.

Even more than that, I had never saved a life before—only taken them. I was more used to being a dark avenger than a savior. I liked the feeling… but at the same time, I knew it wasn't a good fit. Killing was what I was good at, not saving. This time had been a happy convergence of those two things, but I didn't look to it happening again in the future.

Nazir and Saadia's conversation took a fair bit longer than I had thought it would, so by the time they came back downstairs all but the most dedicated drunks had wandered home for the night. Nazir looked tired and disheveled; knowing that Saadia had almost died must have hit him harder than he thought it would.

"Good work," he said as he sat down at the table. "I owe you one."

"We're family," I replied, taking a slow pull off my mead before continuing. "The band is holed up in someplace called Swindler's Den."

"I know where it is," Nazir nodded. I didn't even ask how; Nazir had probably forgotten more about Skyrim's bolt-holes and thieves' dens than I would ever know. "We should get some rest and leave out first thing in the morning. Saadia's not safe until we take care of this."

"Do we have a plan?" I asked.

"The plan is the same plan as always," he replied. "We find them, and we kill them all."

* * *

Finding Swindler's Den had been easy. Delving into its black and fetid depths had been harder—for my sense of cleanliness if not anything else. The place was full of skeevers, spiders, and dripping fungus. Nazir liked the place as little as I did, but I complained more often; Saadia wasn't my ex-girlfriend, after all.

Nazir had eliminated a single sentry when we first entered the caves, but otherwise we hadn't encountered any resistance. The Alik'r were apparently relying on secrecy to keep themselves secure rather than force. That indicated that they were few in number, probably less than ten. Considering that one of them was in prison, one was dead, and two were in Rorikstead, that left perhaps six to deal with. It wasn't impossible odds—Garnag and I had taken on more than that on my first contract—but it was difficult without magic or ranged support fire.

We finally entered a series of caves that were flooded up to my waist, but up ahead we could make out the glimmer of torchlight. Nazir extinguished his lantern and stowed it away, then surprised me by sheathing his sword.

"Stay back here," he cautioned. "I'm going to try to reason with them. If that fails we'll fight, but I owe them at least that much after all these years." I nodded; I didn't really understand it, but it seemed important to him.

We paced forward until we reached the cave entrance, over which flowed a thin waterfall. I pressed myself up against the stone wall and drew my mace before pushing my cowl up over my face. Nazir walked through the waterfall with his hands up. I crept forward to be close enough to see what was going on once he was far enough out to draw the attention of the Alik'r.

"I demand audience with the leader of this band!" Nazir boomed, his hands in the air, palms out. "I am Nazir, who was once of the people of the sands! I come to speak with Kematu!"

Half a dozen Alik'r warriors looked toward the waterfall in surprise, clearly not expecting anyone to penetrate this deep into their lair. They drew their blades and looked toward something above the waterfall. I cursed under my breath; if there was a ledge up above, then I wouldn't be able to see Kematu or what he was doing. If this turned ugly, I might react too late to help Nazir. I would have to risk that Nazir would hold their attention while I snuck into the room.

"Let him speak," came a calm, controlled voice from above. "I would hear the words of this outcast."

Nazir trudged through the water, coming out on a rocky shore nearby. The Alik'r approached him and flanked him as he walked up the ledge toward the upper area. I pushed myself into the water as deeply as possible and waded into the chamber. I looked around and found no one even looking my way. Nazir's distraction was doing its job.

Now that I was free of the waterfall, I could see Kematu himself. He was a tall, powerfully built Redguard perhaps a few years older than Nazir, the sides of his head shaven clean to create a central mane of tight dreadlocks. He wore no robes or hood, instead dressing in the clothes of a common merchant.

"It's rare for Alik'r to act as assassins," Nazir said as he walked toward the leader of the band.

"Assassins?" asked Kematu. "No, nothing so crass." I saw Nazir stiffen up, and I felt my own pride wounded by the off-handed statement. "You clearly know that we're here for the woman who now calls herself 'Saadia.' She's a criminal, wanted by-"

"I don't care why you want her," Nazir interrupted. "How much to make you give up the contract?"

"I see that years away from your people have made you forget about honor, Nazir," Kematu said dryly. "Our band will not give up the pursuit of the woman. This is a matter of pride for us."

"I had hoped you would see reason," Nazir said sadly, pacing forward until he was an arm's length from Kematu. His hands were still up, but something in the way he changed his stance made Kematu's eyes narrow. The older man dropped his hands to the hilts of his twin swords.

Nazir was faster.

I had never seen Nazir fight before, not against a real opponent. He was faster than I could have imagined. He went from a defenseless posture to a quick-draw stance in the time it took me to blink, cross-drawing his scimitar and bringing it up into a sweeping blow in one smooth motion. By the time I had started to step forward to help Nazir, Kematu's head was already free of his shoulders.

Nazir pivoted on one heel, continuing the stroke that beheaded Kematu into the necks of the two closest Alik'r. They weren't beheaded, but the wound dealt to each was fatal. He had killed three men in the space of two of my steps.

Two more Alik'r charged Nazir with bare steel, while a third fell back and pulled a hunting bow from a rack on the wall. He was reaching for an arrow when my mace crushed his forearm. He screamed a high note of agony before my reverse stroke smashed in his temple. I turned toward Nazir, but was forced to turn back when an arrow whizzed past my face. I ducked behind a barrel for cover as the last of the Alik'r drew another arrow and sent it my way. I hated fighting archers.

Nazir was fighting two men at once, holding them both off with a weaving pattern of steel. They looked slow and clumsy compared to Nazir, but fighting two at once isn't easy for even the best swordsman. He used their lack of cooperation against them, his footwork keeping them bumping into each other as he parried and dodged.

Another arrow thunked into the barrel I was hiding behind and an idea came to me. I waited for the next thud, then grabbed the barrel by the bottom and hurled it into the air as hard as I could. As expected, the archer's reflexes worked in my favor as he tracked the barrel and shot at it while I charged him, low to the ground. By the time he had nocked another arrow, my mace had crushed his shin. Once he was on the ground, wailing in pain, it was easy to finish him off.

I looked over to Nazir only to see that his battle was already over. One of his attackers lay on the ground dead, while he was pulling his scimitar out of the other's stomach, kicking him off the ledge into the pool below for good measure. He had a few superficial scratches but otherwise looked untouched. Maybe he hadn't needed my help at all.

"Those archers would have given me problems," he said as if reading my mind. "Thanks, Aventus."

"No problem," I said. I looked around the cave full of dead men. "You think this makes Saadia safe?"

"No," Nazir said, shaking his head. "But whatever money these lot had will let her make a new start of it somewhere else. No one else will come looking for a while, so she'll probably get away."

"But she won't be in Skyrim anymore," I said as sympathetically as I could manage. He nodded and I patted him on the shoulder.

"Better for both of us," he concluded, stooping to clean off his scimitar on one of the dead men's robes. As he sheathed his sword, he looked at me with a quirked eyebrow. "I suppose that you still don't understand women any better."

"Even less now," I admitted. "I also don't know why you would spend so long comforting a woman who hurt you."

"Comforting?" Nazir asked, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. "Aventus… how much do you know about… well, about men and women?" I looked at him expectantly. "Men and women, together?" It finally clicked into place for me.

"Not much really," I admitted, blushing. "I mean, I've picked up a few things by listening to Meena talk…"

"Ugh," Nazir said, walking toward an adjoining chamber to begin rooting through the band's possessions. "She's the last person you want to be hearing from about what's normal for relationships."

"Will you tell me then?" I asked.

"Me?" he said, freezing like a skeever caught rooting through a cupboard. "By Sithis, no!"

"It would be a shame if Hecate found out that you almost blew off a mission to help an ex-girlfriend," I said innocently.

"You wouldn't!" he exclaimed.

"Wouldn't what?" I said with a smirk. "Let the Dark Brotherhood—a band of the most vicious cutthroats and killers in the whole world—find out that their Speaker has a soft spot for a woman in trouble?" I gave him my best vicious smile. "Damn right I would."

"Maybe we trained you too well," he said with a frown. "Fine then, you little sneak." He paused a moment before beginning. "When a man and a woman love each other very much…"

"I know this part," I groused. "Skip to the good stuff."

"I'll tell it in my own way!" he shouted.

It wasn't the way I would have wanted to learn about the facts of life, but I supposed it would have to do.

* * *

…_to be continued…_


	18. Chapter 18: Summertime Blues

**Chapter 18: Summertime Blues**

"Hey, Hecate!" I shouted from the top of the rocky outcropping above the Sea of Ghosts. "Watch this!"

The Listener briefly glanced up from her book to where I was perched a good thirty feet up from where she lay on the sandy beach. I raised my arms above my head and took the opportunity to dive from my ledge into the water below. My form was good enough that I barely made a splash as I hit the sea. I enjoyed the feel of the cool water on my skin briefly before breaking the surface again.

Hecate smiled narrowly and gave me a polite round of applause. I mock-bowed as best as I could in the water, pausing to brush my wet hair out of my eyes. It was getting long again; I would have to ask Babette to cut it soon. I looked up into the blue sky, appreciating the bright sun on my face. Even in summer northern Skyrim wasn't ever hot, but it was far warmer than the rest of the year.

While I loved fishing, it was something I could do virtually year-round. Even in the winter, I had found that I could crack a hole in the ice and go fishing with a pole and line. Summer lasted such a short time in Skyrim that I preferred to spend it in more active ways. Hecate, on the other hand, still preferred to lounge on the beach with a book rather than get into the water for any length of time. The only real difference from spring or autumn was that she wore only the barest of clothing during the summer, the better to work on her tan.

I certainly wasn't complaining about it.

Up and down the beach outside Sanctuary, most of the Dark Brotherhood were out and enjoying the pleasant weather. Nazir was wearing a sleeveless shirt and billowing pants while he tended to a fire pit, though he still kept on his Alik'r head wrapping. Meena was darting up and down the beach in pursuit of seagulls while old Garnag lounged on the soft sand, stripped to the waist and drinking from a large mug. Hecate herself was laying out on a broad blanket, propping her back on a large rock while she read. Vedave and Anaril, our two mer brothers, were helping Nazir with the fire pit and dressed in loose trunks, while Deesei, the only Argonian in the Brotherhood, lounged in a shallow pool on the shoreline.

Scanning the shore, the only members of my extended family that I couldn't see were Babette, Eiruki, and Cicero. Babette wouldn't be making an appearance while the sun was out—I had learned long since that whatever mysteries she might be keeping from me, the night time was her time. I assumed that Eiruki was probably hiding away from the rest of us somewhere.

While the Brotherhood had accepted her readily enough, Eiruki had continued to be reclusive and shy when it came to social gatherings. Her general habit was to slink in to dinner after everyone else had eaten, quietly gather a plate, and move to whatever part of the main hall had the fewest people in it. No one pressed her about it; one of the strongest unwritten rules of the Dark Brotherhood was that no one forced their company on anyone else, just like we weren't supposed to ask anyone what their lives had been like before joining. If they volunteered details, that was fine—but nothing more than that.

The only thing that Eiruki seemed comfortable with other than going on contract was attending my occasional musical perfornances. I had begun practicing with the mandolin every night, even spending a few coins from my precious hoard to buy sheet music and books about musical theory to look over during my downtime. Though I had wanted to find someplace private to practice, an unfortunate incident with a troll a few months back had left me wary of the abandoned rooms of Sanctuary. In the end, I had decided to just endure the good-natured jibes of my fellow assassins and practice in one of the common rooms.

Eiruki would always come creeping in when I began playing, her hair falling into her face as if to hide behind her own brown locks, and just stand awkwardly on the far side of the room. After a few days of that, I had started bringing an extra chair with me. I kept pushing it further and further away from me over the next several days, trying to find a distance she was comfortable with. It took another week before she would actually sit in it while I played and sang.

In time, other members of the Brotherhood had started showing up when I practiced. Though I was prepared for them to be as mocking as Cicero had when I was first learning, the laughter I had expected was instead applause. Deesei and Vedave had been the first to drift in after Eiruki, but eventually Garnag and Anaril had started coming too. Even Nazir would sometimes show up, though he would only stand in the doorway for a few minutes before moving on; he had a loudly professed hatred of everything musical, so I considered it a show of support for him to even be seen while I was practicing.

Through it all, Eiruki had stayed in her corner, quietly listening, only to disappear from the room when I put the mandolin down. I wondered occasionally if she was still embarrassed about winding up in my bed after the troll attack. I had tried to ask her about it once, but she would only stare at the ground and whisper so quietly that I couldn't make out what she was saying. In the months I had known her, Eiruki and I had only had two conversations where I didn't have to ask her to repeat herself constantly.

No, I didn't really expect to see Eiruki at outdoor events like this one.

That only left Cicero.

I cupped one hand over my eyes to block out the sun and scanned back and forth for him. His jester's motley made him a distinctive sight, despite his great skill at stealth. Even when the two of us sparred—not as often now as when I had first joined the Brotherhood—he wouldn't take off his multi-colored hat. It was a little unusual for him to not be out and about while Hecate was, especially if it wasn't Sundas. That was the one day of the week no one expected to see Cicero, since it was the time that he set aside to take care of the needs of the Night Mother, our Unholy Matron. As the Keeper, Cicero had an important responsibility—one that he took deadly serious.

Still, it was strange to not see him out and about on a warm summer day. He had been more erratic and strange over the last few months, and I was beginning to worry that he was slipping back toward the state he had been in when I first joined the Brotherhood. Cicero was—not to dance around the issue—quite mad. He had good days and bad days but until the new year, the good ones had started to outnumber the bad. Now, as the year dragged on into the warmest months, he was starting to act ever more morbid and high-strung.

Though the jester and I had our differences—mainly, I didn't think he was good enough for Hecate—I admired his dedication to the Night Mother, and his skills as an assassin. Given how much he meant to the Listener, I had made it my goal to try and keep him from his worst moments whenever I could. I did my best to be cheerful around the Keeper, laughing at his jokes as much as I could, consulting him about my music despite his occasionally cruel jibes, and generally keeping him engaged.

A chill that had nothing to do with the cold tides of the Sea of Ghosts moved through me as I suddenly realized that both Cicero and Eiruki were missing. Either one of them being gone wouldn't be unusual—but both of them meant trouble brewing. I took off swimming for shore, hoping that I was wrong.

* * *

My worry had taken root back during the springtime, perhaps a week after I had come home from Whiterun with Nazir.

Whenever I came back from a mission, it was my habit to visit the Night Mother briefly. Ever since I had been taken in by the Dark Brotherhood, I had felt a debt of gratitude to our Unholy Matron. I had gotten to thank her in person—well, as close to "in person" as anyone could get with a supernaturally aware corpse—but that hadn't removed the feeling. Throughout my first year in Sanctuary, I had stopped by the makeshift shrine every few months just to bask in her presence for a little while, but it had become more formal ever since becoming a real assassin.

My mother had sometimes talked to me about the Divines when I was little, about how the nine gods watched over humanity, mer, and beast kin alike to guide us toward grace. We had visited the temple a couple of times, but we had never celebrated holidays or anything like that. Part of it was that we were very poor. As I had gotten older, I sometimes thought that my mother had lost her faith in the Divines as our lives had gotten harder. She certainly spoke about them less as I grew up.

That distant belief in faceless gods had never touched my heart the same way as the Night Mother. I knew that she was only the messenger of Sithis, the embodiment of the Void itself, but she was our matron. Sithis was just too big and too distant for me to wrap my mind around. The Night Mother was physical, she was present, and she was the one who directed our blades to those that cried out in vengeance. I didn't think of myself as a very deep person in most ways, but seeing the Night Mother made me think about the bigger picture—about the deeper meanings of what we did. It was a heady experience.

I suppose that it's what other people called "faith."

When I got home from Whiterun, I had taken a little time to get cleaned up, eat a bite, and tell a few (somewhat edited) tales of the journey while Nazir made the formal report to Hecate. Once all that was taken care of, and I was in something like a presentable state, I made my way to the Night Mother's shrine. If it had been Sundas, I would have waited until the next day; Cicero performed his Keeping duties on Sundas, and the shrine was off-limits for the whole day. Fortunately, it was mid-week so I was able to go right away.

Once I was in the small room where the Night Mother's coffin was kept, I laid out a small pillow on the floor to spare my knees from the hard stone. The first few times had been a real pain, and I didn't think the Night Mother was particularly interested in me being uncomfortable, so I made accommodations. The room was filled with candles that provided flickering illumination, but the only other adornments were a pair of tapestries depicting the black hand symbol of the Dark Brotherhood.

The coffin itself was always open, revealing the Night Mother's desiccated form. She was dressed in a simple, dark burial cloth that left her face and arms exposed. The arms were clasped across her chest almost like a mother cradling a baby, and her body was bound in place within the iron coffin by sturdy ropes. The Night mother's head lolled slightly to one side, further increasing the impression of a woman holding a child.

The Night Mother's withered face caused even some of the assassins I knew to take pause or shudder in fear, which I considered strange. I had been afraid of corpses too, a long time ago, but it was the Night Mother that had removed that fear. For me, she was a symbol of how death was not the end. Corpses had been a source of fear for me only because of the wasted potential they represented—the unfairness of a sudden end. The Night Mother had shown me how that was not the case, and how the spirit could endure the death of the body. In short, performing the Black Sacrament and having it answered had made me a true believer.

By now, the others had learned about my "eccentric" habit and didn't disturb me during my visits to the Night Mother. Cicero apparently approved of my shows of faith; even he left me alone while I was visiting our Unholy Matron. The tendency toward privacy among members of the Dark Brotherhood worked well for me. My visits to the Night Mother were very much a personal ritual for me, and I didn't care for them to become a source of scrutiny as my musical lessons had done.

I knelt on my pillow and bowed my head before the Night Mother. It was pretty common knowledge at this point that the Listener could "hear" the voice of the Night Mother in her mind. Hecate had once told me that she could "speak" to the Night Mother with just her mind, but that she preferred to speak out loud when it was necessary to talk at all. The Night Mother normally just expected Hecate to live up to her title—to Listen. Because of that, I knew that the Night Mother could read thoughts, but I wasn't sure if it was something she could do to everyone or just to the Listener. So I prayed out loud to make sure the Night Mother could hear me.

I never asked the Night Mother for anything in my prayers. She wasn't some wish-granting daedra. There was only one wish the Night Mother would grant—and she had already granted mine long ago. My soul had been sworn to Sithis since I was ten years old, and all I could hope for was a long life serving the Dread Lord and Unholy Matron. No, when I prayed to the Night Mother, I simply told her all of the things I had done in her name while out in the world. I thanked her for the opportunity to carry vengeance to the deserving. It usually took an hour or two, but I considered it time well spent.

"What are you doing?" came a whisper-soft voice from behind me. I paused in my prayers and looked over my shoulder. Standing in the doorway, not quite in the room, was Eiruki, the newest member of my extended family. I sighed inwardly; she was new enough that she must not have known about my visits to the Night Mother yet.

"I'm praying to the Night Mother," I explained patiently, keeping my voice as low as hers. Eiruki took a step closer to me.

"But why?" she asked. "Can she hear you?"

"I think she can," I said. Honestly, I had no idea if the Night Mother could really hear me—or if she cared at all about what I said even if she could—but it comforted me to think that I mattered to her, at least a little. She certainly mattered to me.

"Has she ever talked to you?" Eiruki continued to creep slowly forward as she spoke, finally bypassing me and slinking up toward the Night Mother's coffin.

"The Night Mother only speaks to the Listener," I told her. "But she's talked to Hecate lots of times." I paused, thinking a moment. "Did they not tell you any of this when you joined?"

"I wasn't really that interested in it," she admitted quietly. It was the longest conversation I'd ever had with Eiruki. Up until that moment, I hadn't even been certain she was capable of saying more than a couple of sentences at a time. "I just wanted a place to call home. Hecate said I would have a new family."

"I hope we've made you feel welcome," I said, feeling a little ashamed. I hadn't gotten to know any of the new recruits as well as I might have, and Eiruki talking about family made me wonder if I could do more to get to know them all better. After all, I knew what it was like to have no one—and what it was like to have a new family.

"Oh, everyone's been wonderful," she said in a slightly higher tone than usual. "I just…" She turned toward me, her eyes downcast toward the floor. She bit her lower lip as though trying to keep the words in, and her soft brown hair half-covered her face. "I'm not… good with people."

I knew the feeling.

Eiruki turned away from me and walked until she was no more than an arm's length away from the Night Mother. She started to reach out toward the withered body, her hand tentatively moving toward the Unholy Matron's corpse.

"I wouldn't do that," I warned. Her hand froze in midair but didn't withdraw. "It's disrespectful. And Cicero wouldn't like it."

"I'm not going to hurt her," Eiruki complained. "I just want to see if she's really in there. If I touch her, it shouldn't be like touching a normal body, right? It should feel different."

Before she could finish her train of thought, Cicero melted out of my peripheral vision and snatched her hand. I hadn't even heard him enter the room.

"She's there all right," he hissed, pulling Eiruki roughly away from the coffin. "And loyal Cicero is here to make sure no one disrespects her." I had been on the receiving end of Cicero's anger before—I had tried to touch the Night Mother too, when I first joined the Brotherhood. Her body was somehow hypnotic, to the point that I hadn't even realized I was reaching for her until Cicero had stopped me. I heard Eiruki whimper in pain as Cicero dragged her back.

"She understands now," I said, standing up and brushing my knees off. "You can let her go, Cicero."

"Does the girl understand?" he snarled. The Keeper had been in a foul mood since New Life Day, and he seemed in no better condition now. "I wonder if she needs a harsher lesson, hmm?" He looked at her and his face widened into a grimace that might have been an attempt at a smile. "Do you remember the Tenets, girl? The First Tenet, especially?"

"Let her go," I insisted, putting a hand on Cicero's arm. He looked at me with a wild, feral expression, and for a moment I thought he might strike me. Finally, after a long moment, he straightened his posture and released Eiruki's hand. I could see the skin already bruising from where he had grabbed her.

"Never let it be said that poor Cicero is unkind to new recruits," he said in a cheerier voice, though his face still lacked its characteristic smile. He turned from us to begin inspecting the Night Mother's body, his hands hovering over the withered flesh but not quite touching it as he muttered to himself. I quietly moved to Eiruki and took her by the arm to lead her out of the room. I was surprised that she didn't flinch away from me, but instead leaned over so that she was resting most of her weight against my side.

Once we were out of Cicero's earshot, I let go of her arm and turned to face her.

"Look, Eiruki," I started, "you can't do that sort of stuff. Cicero takes the Tenets really seriously."

"But I'm not disrespecting the Night Mother," she half-whispered. "How is touching her disrespectful?" She reached up and caressed my cheek gently, her fingers skimming the skin as lightly as a feather. "Do you feel disrespected?"

"That's different," I said, my cheeks beginning to burn. I grabbed her hand and immediately felt terrible when she whimpered and clenched her eyes shut. When I let go of the hand, she cradled it to her chest like an animal with a wounded paw. "Sorry," I muttered. "But my point stands. You can't do stuff that upsets Cicero. He's the Keeper."

She nodded and I started to walk away, but what I heard next chilled my blood.

"He isn't around her all the time," she murmured, so softly that I was barely able to hear her at all.

* * *

I quickly toweled off and made my way toward Sanctuary, pulling on my trousers as I went. I hadn't been able to find my shirt while running, and completely ignored my boots since they would have taken too long to get on. Once I was past the Black Door and out of the sun, the chill of Sanctuary hit me like a wall of ice. I shivered and the hairs on my arms stood on end. I padded across the stone floors of Sanctuary in my bare feet, racing for the Night Mother's shrine.

Ever since that first incident, Eiruki hadn't been content to leave it alone. She would find excuses to visit the shrine while no one else was around and leave little token behind on the ground in front of the coffin. Cicero would usually throw a mild tantrum about it, but as long as she wasn't actually touching the coffin or the Night Mother's body, he didn't really have cause to do anything about it. He would just throw away the flowers, or coins, or incense, or whatever else Eiruki had left behind, yell at her for a few minutes, and then go storming off.

During these tirades, Eiruki was always very still and quiet, her eyes downcast and near tears. She would never say anything to defend herself, and no one would step in since it was just verbal. I'm not sure that anyone but me would have stepped in if it had escalated to more than that—Cicero's position as Keeper made him the arbiter of "right" and "wrong" when it came to the Night Mother, after all. Still, despite everything, it kept happening.

It worried me on multiple levels. On the one hand, I didn't want to see Eiruki get hurt. On the other, she seemed to be almost intentionally taunting the Keeper. I couldn't imagine why she would want to do that, so I had generously allowed that she was trying to show her own faith too, just in a way that was a little inappropriate. Assassins were a notoriously unstable lot—myself included—so maybe it was just like how Pavot would sometimes bring me back a dead badger while we were out on walks.

More than that, though, I stayed out of it because I had seen what Eiruki could do in a crisis. I had no doubt that she was just as competent a killer as any of us—she had been out on contract as much as I had since joining the Brotherhood, for Sithis' sake. Hecate had recruited her personally, just like all of our new brothers and sisters. Her competence wasn't in question for me. Her sanity, on the other hand… Well, provoking Cicero wasn't something that I thought anyone sane would do intentionally.

No, the two of them alone in Sanctuary could only be trouble.

Running through Sanctuary in bare feet had my heels aching in moments. When I got to the Night Mother's shrine, I was relieved to find the place empty and quiet. I sagged against one of the stone walls, resting on the balls of my feet to take some of the pressure off of my aching heels. I felt vaguely foolish for being so worried but also deeply grateful that I had been wrong.

My sense of peace and quiet lasted just long enough to hear the blood-curdling screams echo through Sanctuary.

It sounded like they were coming from the upper hallways, somewhere near the private living quarters, so that's where I headed toward. A quick glance around showed most of the doors closed, so I quickly stuck my head into Nazir's office, then continued on down the hall to the practice room. What I saw there made me stop in the doorway, stunned into paralysis.

Cicero was stalking up and down the room in his shortclothes, hair disarrayed and wild like a red halo around his head. He was livid with fury, which made his near-nudity somehow hilarious and even more terrifying. I was trapped between wanting to burst out laughing and wanting to run and hide under a very large rock. As he moved erratically through the practice room, he would stop and flip over benches, knock over training dummies, push down weapon racks, all the while ranting and screaming.

"Where is it?" he shouted. "What did you do with it? How dare you violate the Tenets! When I find you, I'll kill you!" He yelled at the top of his lungs, his face red and puffy with anger, stopping only to howl wordlessly and beat his fists on the stone in a gesture of futile rage. When he stopped for a breath, I could see a red smear on the wall from where he had hit it hard enough to draw blood.

I backed out of the room slowly, glad that I hadn't drawn Cicero's attention, when I bumped into someone. I turned around with my fists up in a defensive posture and relaxed only slightly when I saw Eiruki's tear-streaked, terrified face. I started to ask her what was going on when I saw that she was cradling a bundle of red cloth to her chest, holding onto it like a drowning woman clinging to a log.

"Oh, Sithis," I cursed softly. "You stole his motley?"

"It was just a prank," she whispered. "Everyone else was out swimming, and Cicero was staying in and being all grumpy, so I thought if I hid his clothes while he was in the bath, he would… you know…" She trailed off. "I didn't mean anything by it. I thought it would be funny." She winced at Cicero's latest howl of fury and backed away a step. "I mean, he dresses like a jester. He should like pranks, right?"

I rubbed the bridge of my nose with two fingers, the way Babette usually did when she was frustrated with me. I suddenly knew exactly how she felt whenever I did something really stupid.

"Go to Cicero's room and put the motley on his bed," I said, desperately trying to find a way to salvage this situation. "Then go change into something to swim in and get out of Sanctuary. I'll distract him long enough for you to get clear, then try and convince him that he just misplaced it." She nodded frantically, still wide-eyed and fearful, and ran off as soon as I turned away from her.

Of course, I was lying. Cicero would sooner misplace his eyes than his motley. It suddenly occurred to me that this was the first time I had ever seen him without his jester's cap on. No, he wouldn't believe that he had just forgotten where he had put his most prized possession. But if he found out that Eiruki had done it, he would probably kill her. My only option was to take the blame myself and apologize. I honestly didn't think that Cicero would do anything lethal to me—we had known each other too long, and he knew that Hecate cared about my life.

With a deep breath and a flutter of trepidation, I stepped out into the room.

"Cicero," I said in an even voice. The jester stopped in the middle of flipping over a table covered in practice sticks and looked at me, his eyes wide and his nostrils flared. I quirked up a smile that felt a little more genuine than it might have a minute before; he genuinely looked kind of silly, holding a table up at an angle in just his underpants.

"Aventus," he responded, dropping the table with a clatter. He came walking toward me like a stalking wolf, clenching and unclenching his hands in front of him. "She stole it! She broke the Fourth Tenet! Not even the Listener—dear, sweet Hecate—could argue!"

"Who stole what?" I asked innocently, walking out to meet him in the middle of the room.

"The jester's motley!" he shouted, spittle flying from his mouth. "She stole it!"

"Cicero, calm down" I said in as calm a voice as I could manage, holding my hands out in front of me, palms out. "No one stole your motley." I took a deep breath and prepared to lie to a man I sometimes thought of as my adopted father for a girl I barely knew. "I hid it."

"You what?" he asked, his face drooping.

"I hid your motley," I repeated, more firmly. "I didn't steal anything. It was just a little joke, that's all. Everyone was saying that you don't get out enough, and I thought about you hanging out in here all alone, and…" I trailed off, shrugging slightly and wearing my best disarming smile. "It was a bad joke, and I'm sorry. I didn't realize you'd be so upset."

Cicero hung his head low, his long red hair falling into his face.

"A joke?" he asked. I nodded, and he started to chuckle, deep and low in his throat. Then the chuckles became snickers and finally guffaws, a deep and rolling belly laugh. His laughter was infectious, and I was so relieved that I started to laugh along, through less deeply. "Sorry, he says," he said between the laughs. He laid a hand on my shoulder and leaned forward, barely able to stand from laughing so hard.

I was so caught up in my relief that I didn't even see him swing the first punch. I didn't even know that he had done anything aggressive until I was lying on the floor at his feet, stars swimming through my vision and my jaw feeling like a giant had kicked me.

"Sorry, he says!" he roared, the laughter dying in an instant. He clenched his fists and paced toward me. "Not yet! Not yet!" He launched a heavy kick toward my midsection, and I rolled enough to take it on my hip instead of my belly or ribs. It still sent me rolling across the stone floor and sent horrible numbness up my back and down my leg. "You will be sorry! Sorry indeed!"

I realized that I might have perhaps made a miscalculation about Cicero not being willing to hurt me.

I kept rolling as Cicero launched another kick, then lashed out with my unhurt leg at his ankle. He danced away, light on his feet as ever, but it gave me the breathing room I needed to kip up to a standing position. I staggered for just a moment as the feeling came back in my numb hip, sending sharp agony through the left side of my body. Cicero saw my momentary weakness and rushed back in to exploit it, throwing a flurry of light jabs at seemingly random places. I back away from him, weaving my hands defensively but still letting a pair of sharp knuckle-strikes land on my torso.

My only advantage—if I could call it that—was that Cicero was fighting angry. He had always had such control and finesse when we were sparring that I could never find an opening before. Now, he was throwing wild and furious blows with no overall fighting strategy. It was an advantage in the sense that I could try to capitalize on it to keep him from tearing me apart. It was a disadvantage in the sense that I was beginning to worry that he might actually do it. Cicero was the best fighter I knew, and I had never even landed a single blow on him in our sparring matches. If he wanted to kill me, all I could really hope to do was hold out long enough for him to change his mind.

He threw a sharp forward punch that I managed to partly deflect, but it grazed my shoulder with enough force to knock me a few inches out of my stance. Cicero immediately followed up with a snap kick to my midsection that knocked the wind out of me. While I was staggered from losing my breath, he punched me full across the face hard enough to rattle my teeth and knock me into the wall. I sagged partway down to the floor, tasting blood in my mouth.

"I won't kill him, no," Cicero muttered as he walked toward me. "First violations should just be a warning." At least he didn't mean to kill me, which was something. The fact that he was talking to himself while he fought me didn't fill me with confidence that he could stop himself short of murder, though. Assassins didn't fight to wound or disable—they fought to kill. The instinct became strong enough that holding back could become a struggle.

As Cicero muttered and I struggled to stand up straight, a sudden realization hit me. Cicero was the best assassin I knew—and that made him likely to go for killing and crippling blows above merely wounding or stunning ones. His whole fighting style revolved around exploiting an enemy's weakness. He was faster than he was strong, so he could afford to throw a dozen punches at me and wear me down with whatever hit, because I just wasn't quick enough to defend effectively. Once a few shots got through, I would be weakened enough that he could finish me off at his leisure. I couldn't afford to just defend myself and hope he got tired of beating me.

If I wanted to survive, I had to go on the offensive.

With a roar of fury, I launched myself away from the wall. To his credit, Cicero was only surprised for a fraction of a second, but it was enough to make him lose his footing and stumble out of my path instead of making a more useful defense. Once I wasn't backed into a corner, I shook the blood out of my eyes and lifted my fists in front of me, settling into a broad, powerful stance. Cicero's narrow stance was more mobile, but it didn't have as much raw force attached to it.

He recovered quickly and danced in toward me, bobbing back and forth as he tried to remain unpredictable. I didn't bother trying to predict his angle of attack. Instead, as soon as he was within my greater reach, I threw a wide haymaker. The seemingly wild punch force him to duck under it as the shorter combatant, and when he popped up again like a jack-in-the-box, I put a rabbit punch into his lower ribs. His narrow stance made it impossible for him to block, and he staggered aside to reduce the force of the blow.

I didn't have the time to congratulate myself on my first successful hit against my teacher before he renewed his attack, jabbing up at my throat with his fingers extended. I narrowed my stance and slid aside from the strike, then widened my stance again, leading with the opposite foot so that Cicero's flank lined up with my line of attack. I threw a shovel hook into his kidney with my off hand but didn't have the opportunity to press my advantage before he put a backfist into my nose.

We staggered apart, eying each other warily. I wasn't nearly as hurt or winded as I would have been only a few months ago, but I had barely managed to touch Cicero. He was breathing heavily, though—he must have exhausted himself with his tantrum before we had started fighting, and now he was feeling the burn.

"Stop this," I growled, trying my best to sound intimidating. "Hecate wouldn't want us fighting over a silly prank." Cicero paused and looked at his bloody hands. His face drooped with sorrow and his shoulders slumped.

"Of course," he said in a voice that was small and pained. "The boy is right. The Listener doesn't want her family fighting." He walked toward me with a hand out. "Apology accepted, Aventus."

I think that it was him using my real name instead of calling me "the boy" that lulled me enough for that trick to work. When I stuck out my hand to shake his, he stepped inside my reach and punched me full-on in the face. I felt my nose break and I blacked out.

I came to a few moments later, Cicero hunched down on his heels next to me. His face was composed and neutral—almost haughty—as he looked down at me.

"Age and treachery will always beat youth and enthusiasm," he said as he offered me a hand. It didn't seem like he was just talking about the fight, but I was too dazed to figure out what he was saying. I blinked blood out of my eyes and just stared at it until he leaned the rest of the way down and grabbed my arm. He hauled me to my feet like a bundle of rags and pulled my arm around his shoulders. "Consider it a lesson earned easier than most of its kind."

I was too dizzy and numb to respond as he dragged me through Sanctuary to Babette's quarters. He pounded on her door until she finally opened it, bleary-eyed and annoyed. If she was going to say anything about being bothered during the day, seeing the two of us standing there—blood, bruised and half-naked—made her keep it to herself. She tended to our wounds and applied her usual standards of treatment to lessen the damage, but I still wound up having to wear a nose splint. It helped drive home the point Hecate had made to me more than once: potions could keep you going during a fight or take away the pain after, but they didn't make the damage go away.

By the time everyone had come back to Sanctuary, Cicero and I had both gotten cleaned up and dressed. Thankfully, his motley had been just where I told Eiruki to put it. Hecate asked what we had been doing to get into such a state, and we both just laughed it off as a sparring match gone a little too far. If anyone besides Eiruki suspected the truth, no one said anything.

Assassins didn't pry, after all.

* * *

A few days later, while I was practicing with my mandolin and most of the Brotherhood was out of Sanctuary, Eiruki came wandering in. She took her usual seat, then stood up and pulled the chair closer to me until she was near enough to touch. Neither of us said anything about what she had done, or that I had lied to protect her. We just sat together as I played music, companionably quiet. When I finished practicing and stood up to put away my mandolin, she stood up too. I turned toward her, opening my mouth to ask her what she had been thinking.

That's when she kissed me.

At first, I was too stunned to do anything except stand there while she pressed her open mouth against mine, but after a moment I collected myself enough to start kissing her back. I didn't really know what I was doing—or even why I was doing it—but I was lost in the sensations for long minutes. Finally, she broke the kiss and took a step back from me. I looked at her with what must have been a shocked expression, unable to form coherent thoughts, let alone words.

"Thank you," she whispered, before turning and running from the room. I stood there, still as a stone statue, for what felt like forever before my jaw finally unlocked. My body was tingling from head to toe, and I felt as stunned as if Cicero had hit me in the nose again.

"You're welcome," I muttered to an empty room.

* * *

…_to be continued…_


	19. Chapter 19: Promises Made to Be Broken

**Chapter 19: Promises Made to be Broken**

My kiss with Eiruki haunted me, in more ways than one. As soon as she was gone, I collapsed back into my chair, unable to quite process what had happened. My emotions were a whirlwind; it felt almost like the time I nearly died from fever.

What did Eiruki want from me? The kiss hadn't been at all sisterly. How did I feel about her in return? And if she wanted something from me—whether a relationship or something purely physical—could I give it to her? I knew that my body was telling me to forget about all of the questions and doubts, to just find her again and kiss her some more, but my heart belonged to someone else.

But did it still? After everything that had happened while Hecate was gone, did I still love her? And even if I did, was my love something that even mattered? She would never see me as a grown man, and she was in love with Cicero despite his madness and violence. Or perhaps because of it.

Sitting alone in a dim room with a mandolin and burning lips, I thought back to spring.

* * *

By the time Nazir and I had returned to Sanctuary, things had picked up. Winter was always a slow season for assassinations. People just didn't seem to have the same rancor in the colder months, or maybe no one wanted to perform the Black Sacrament while they were freezing their fingers off. Either way, our business always boomed by the end of First Seed.

Brothers and sisters were being dispatched across Skyrim—and sometimes outside of it—on an almost daily basis. Life fell into a pleasant pattern: work, a few days of downtime in Sanctuary, and then back to work. Coin changed hands, dues were paid to the Brotherhood, and Sithis was praised in our deeds. It was a rare day that more than three of us were home, not counting Nazir, Hecate, and Cicero. Those three were the leadership of the Dark Brotherhood, so they went on assignment far less than the rest of us.

In the weeks Nazir and I had been gone, two new family members had been recruited: a female Bosmer named Geldii, and a male Breton called Elbent. Geldii was an interesting paradox—a wood elf that fought in heavy armor with a mighty double-bladed axe—while Elbent seemed to love money more than even most Imperials I had ever met. I didn't get a chance to know either of them very well before having to go right back out on mission with Garnag. I looked forward to learning more about them when I had the time.

I always enjoyed working with Garnag. He liked telling stories and answering questions, and I had an insatiable curiosity for the world beyond Dawnstar. I might never get to see Cyrodiil, but when Garnag talked about the White Gold Tower I could almost see it. I envied that kind of storytelling ability, the power to make images with words.

Even beyond the enjoyment of having a partner who could help us stay entertained on the long hours of travel before getting to our target, Garnag's years of experience made him an expert at providing support and backup. He usually gave me point on our contracts—the privilege of actually delivering the Night Mother's vengeance to the target—both because I needed the field experience and because his advanced age made it a little more difficult for him to engage in the physical end of our work. I didn't mind, though. Garnag's magic had saved my life more than once, and my strength and fighting skill had saved his.

This mission was nothing particularly noteworthy, sadly. While I appreciated every contract from the Night Mother as a sacred covenant of vengeance, I had learned that not all contracts were created equal. I had killed seven men and women in the Night Mother's name—including Rolff Stone-Fist—and they had run the gamut from challenging missions of holy revenge to very simple killings. Garnag and I had been sent to end the life of a woman who had murdered her husband to take his share of a business; the client was the dead husband's brother, who had been seduced into giving up his share of the business as well, only to find that the woman had loved neither of them.

It was all very sordid, but it hardly made it more difficult for two skilled assassins to kill a middle-aged businesswoman. It took longer to travel to Morthal and find her than it had to kill her and hide her body.

As we were leaving the city a few hours later, Garnag turned to me and asked, "Have you considered a signature?"

"What's that now?" I asked in return, eating an apple as we rode our horses.

"A signature," he said again. "You know, a personal way of dispatching your targets." He scratched his stubbly chin in thought. "It's like how Chickpea dresses like a jester and only uses knives. Or how Anaril freezes his targets so cold that they shatter into pieces." Garnag chuckled at the thought of someone exploding into icy shards, and I found myself smiling too. It was strange what became funny when you were a professional killer. "Lucien Lachance was one of the greatest killers of the last Era—he killed people with poisoned apples."

"I haven't given it any thought," I said with a shrug to cut off Garnag from reminiscing about long-dead killers. As much as I enjoyed history and stories, the history of the Brotherhood was one of the least interesting topics Garnag could bring up. I stopped chewing and spit out the rest of my apple; I wasn't hungry anymore. "Honestly, until you mentioned the possibility, I hadn't even considered it."

"I'm not surprised," Garnag said, nodding. "It seems like this new Brotherhood is a lot less theatrical than the old one." I quirked up an eyebrow at him and he laughed again. "It's true! Back in the old days, there were enough of us that if you wanted to stand out against the crowd—to get picked to make real coin—you didn't just have to be good at killing. You had to be flashy too."

"What was your signature?" I asked in curiosity.

"I didn't have one," he admitted. "It's one of the reasons I didn't ever get ahead very far back then." He shook his head sadly, his good humor flowing away like water. "Of course, it might also be why I lived when almost everyone else died. I wasn't high up enough to get sent on the really tough missions, or low enough to get sent out as cannon fodder when things got to their worst." His face was distant and bitter as he spoke about the past, so I quickly changed the subject.

"Do you really think I need a signature then?" I asked. "I mean, a lot of the time, we don't want people to even know we were there."

"That's true," he said. "It's always common sense when to not use it, but all the greatest assassins of the past had a personal touch for their kills. If they ever catch you in the act, it makes it tough to deny a connection to other crimes—but the great ones never get caught. Look at that Butcher fellow up in Windhelm, for example."

"Don't compare us to him," I said with a disdainful shake of my head. "He murders innocent girls and gets away with it because no one is competent enough to stop him. He's exactly the sort of person we should be hunting down, not admiring for his clever knife-work."

"Augh, moralizing. Another unpleasant habit you've picked up from the Listener. But you're young yet," Garnag chuckled. "You'll get over this whole 'innocent' and 'guilty' thing soon enough."

I knew Garnag meant the best for me, but I worried about what he said. I had joined the Dark Brotherhood because of a deep moral commitment to the idea that killing the bad people would help the good ones. If there ever came a day that I didn't care about things like innocence and guilt anymore, I'm not sure that I would still be a good assassin. I definitely wouldn't like myself very much anymore. A lot of my brothers and sisters ignored those sorts of things—and I respected their right to do so—but I genuinely believed that the Night Mother would never send one of her bloody-handed children against someone truly innocent.

No, at least in this, Garnag was dead wrong.

We rode in silence for a couple of hours until I finally realized what Garnag had been getting at when he brought it up. He had emphasized that the best killers had a signature—the very best. I wondered if Garnag had been trying to say that he thought I could be one of those great assassins. After mulling it over for a bit, I dismissed the idea from my mind. Thinking of myself as a "great assassin" was just hubris. I was just another blade in the Night Mother's service, happy in my anonymity to the outside world.

* * *

It took us most of a week to get back to Sanctuary. Though Rain's Hand had lived up to its name for much of the trip, it was sunny and bright out as we reached the road outside Dawnstar. We had both thrown off our cloaks and were enjoying the feel of the warm sun and cool breeze as we rode.

My reverie was interrupted by the sight of a dead horse by the side of the road.

I held out a hand to Garnag, indicating that we should stop and check it out. Another reason that I liked working with Garnag was that we had put together our own unique language of hand signs, making communication without noise easier than with any of my other siblings. We both dismounted and paced away from our horses, spreading out to minimize the possibility of an ambush. Garnag drew his sword, and I my flanged mace.

Once we were close enough to get a better view of the horse, my heart sank. The brown mare was Cicero's steed, Hilarity. She had clearly been dead for a couple of hours, her lips white and red with bloody foam. From the look of her, Cicero had ridden her to death. The jester's saddlebags were still on her, untouched, and the ground nearby was littered with signs of the Fool of Heart's rapid departure from the scene.

My mouth went dry at reading the tracks. He had abandoned his dead horse without even taking any of his possessions. We were only a few hours from Sanctuary by foot, so coming back later with a fresh horse to pick up his things was entirely reasonable. What worried me more was that I saw no sign of Shadowmere's passing. Where was Hecate?

"Garnag," I said, calling the elderly orc's attention away from looking for signs of trouble. "It's Cicero's horse."

"Any sign of Chickpea?" he asked, obviously worried for his old friend.

"Tracks say he walked out of here on his own power," I told him. I didn't mention that he looked like he was running as if wolves were behind him, despite no sign of pursuit. "I don't see any sign of Shadowmere or Hecate, though."

"We should split up and look for them," he ventured.

"It looks like Cicero is following the main road for now," I said as I ran back to my horse, Spot. I vaulted up into the saddle and wheeled around. "You can probably overtake him if you ride hard. I'm going to cut cross-country back to Sanctuary and see if anyone had heard from Hecate."

"Sithis guide you," Garnag blessed quickly as he started tugging Cicero's saddlebags free of poor Hilarity's corpse.

I rode through the forest at the best speed I could manage without breaking my mount's legs. Unlike Hecate and Cicero, who had racked up a body count of horses between the two of them that rivaled my number of contracts, I had no desire to have to put down a horse that had done nothing to me. Still, I sacrificed some amount of caution for speed in this case. Hecate meant more to me than any dumb beast.

Long hours exploring the woods around Sanctuary with Pavot and hunting with Deesei had left me familiar with most of the shortcuts and hidden animal paths within a few hours' walk of the Black Door. It took me less than an hour to reach Sanctuary's hidden stables on horseback. As I trotted Spot up to the moss-and-ivy covered entrance, I saw Shadowmere standing next to a tree outside the stables and breathed a sigh of relief. It still didn't answer why Hecate had come back from wherever she had gone without Cicero, but at least Shadowmere's presence meant that she had come home safely.

I quickly stabled Spot and ran through the Black Door, only to find the place in a rush of activity and conversation. Meena, Geldii, and Elbent were gathered around a table near the entry to the main hall, arguing loudly, while Eiruki sat by herself on the far side of the room.

"What's going on?" I asked Meena as I rushed over to the gathered assassins. "Where are Hecate and Cicero?"

"This one does not know where the Keeper has gone," Meena said in her usual slightly haughty tones, "but the Listener is packing to leave."

"What!" I exclaimed, not quite making it a question.

"It's true," Geldii confirmed. "She came in looking like something the cat dragged in-" She glanced over at Meena and quickly added, "No offense intended." Meena nodded.

"No, no," she said generously, "she would look worse if a cat dragged her in."

"Regardless," the wood elf continued, "she looked pretty rough. Ran off to the Night Mother's shrine, then came back a few minutes later and said she was leaving. Didn't know when she'd be back."

"Did she say where she was going?" I pressed.

"She told Nazir," Elbent piped up. "He made a good point about needing to get ahold of her if an emergency came up, but-"

I wasn't listening anymore. I turned and ran off toward Nazir's office, leaving Elbent behind to huff in annoyance, only to find it empty. I could hear low voices coming from the direction of Hecate's rooms, so I started heading that way. The voices grew in volume, not quite shouting but clearly incensed. As I reached the door, Nazir came storming out, almost knocking me over.

"You're back," he said gruffly. I nodded unnecessarily. "See if you can talk some damn sense into her then. You're the only one she ever listens to besides Cicero and the Night Mother anyway." Then he stalked off, fuming and frowning. I couldn't even enjoy the idea that Nazir thought Hecate would listen to me out of worry for what might be going on.

I knocked gently on the doorframe without walking in. The door was open and I could see Hecate tossing clothes into a leather duffel bag. She didn't fold or tuck anything, just cramming things in as she grabbed them. She was clearly preparing to leave as soon as the bag was full. She looked up from her packing, and I could see why the others had been so disturbed.

Hecate's hair was matted and tangled, as though she hadn't bathed in days. Her face was dirty and streaky, though from rain or tears I couldn't tell. There were dark circles under her eyes, so sleep was probably as distant a memory as bathing. Her clothes were fresher than the rest of her, but the filthy Brotherhood leathers tossed on the ground next to her bed indicated that they weren't the ones she had arrived in.

"Hecate," I called when she seemed to either not hear or ignore my knock. She continued to pack frantically, as though slowing down would make her reconsider what she was doing. I called her name again, louder this time, and she finally looked up at me. Her face had a haunted, ragged look to it. The pain in her eyes made me take a step back.

"Aventus?" she asked, as though she wasn't quite sure. Her hands froze, filled with odds and ends of clothing.

"Yeah," I said, starting to walk toward her, "it's me." I looked around the chaotic clutter of the bedroom. While Hecate had never been one for tidying up her living area, it was worse than usual. "What's going on? Meena and Geldii said something about you leaving."

"I have to," she said, starting to pack again, albeit more slowly. "I need to go away for a while to… to get my head together."

"Did Cicero do something?" I asked. To my shock, Hecate's face fell and she started leaking tears, her eyes scrunched together to try and hold them in. My face must have shown something of my worry because when she looked at me, she suddenly lost control and burst out crying. She buried her face in the clothes she was holding and collapsed onto the bed, bent forward at the waist. The room started vibrating from the noises she was making; as the Dragonborn, her voice could be dangerous when uncontrolled.

I walked over and sat on the bed next to her, patting her back awkwardly. I didn't think of myself as very good at consoling people, but she seemed to get herself back under control. She sat up straighter and blew her nose into the shirt she was holding. She pulled it away and looked at it, wrinkling her nose in distaste.

"Guess I'm not taking that with me," she said with a hollow laugh as she tossed the soiled garment onto the floor.

"Are you sure you should be traveling like this?" I asked with real worry. In the years I had been part of the Dark Brotherhood, I had only seen Hecate crying once before. I could feel my previous worry for Cicero turning into sour anger; on some level, I couldn't help but think that this was his fault. Whatever "this" was.

"I'll be fine," she said, wiping at her damp eyes with her sleeve. "I just have to go before Cicero gets back." She looked over at me, noting my frown, and continued. "He hasn't done anything. It's me. I'm the problem. But if I don't go before he comes home, he'll try to talk me out of going." She stood up and starting putting things in the duffel bag again. "Divines help me, he might even succeed."

"I don't really understand," I admitted, "but if you say you have to, then I guess you have to."

"The Greybeards are the only ones who can help me," she said absently as her hands moved.

"You're going to High Hrothgar?" I asked in surprise. She looked at me sharply. "Garnag mentioned them in one of his stories. He said they were a bunch of milk-drinking pacifists."

"They are pacifists," she said with a frown, "but there's nothing wrong with that." She paused and bit the tip of her thumb in thought. "Aventus, you have to promise me that you won't tell Cicero where I'm going."

"Sure," I said nonchalantly.

"No, I mean it," Hecate insisted, laying her hands on my shoulders. "I can't have him following me until I get everything under control. Until I'm less dangerous to be around."

"Hecate," I said, standing up until we were eye-to-eye, "I'll promise if you want me to. But you're an assassin. You're supposed to be dangerous."

"Not to the people I love," she said, her eyes welling up with tears again.

"I promise," I said quickly, hoping to keep her from crying. I was willing to say anything to keep her from pain. She nodded mutely and drew me in close to an embrace. We wrapped our arms around one another and stayed that way for long minutes. "I promise," I said again when she finally pulled away.

"Divines keep you, Aventus Aretino," she said as she hefted the duffel bag onto one shoulder.

"Sithis guide you, Listener," I said formally. "Kill well and often."

"I think that might be part of the problem," she whispered as she turned away.

It wasn't until she was gone that I realized that she must have meant Cicero when she was talking about "hurting the people she loved." I had never heard her say that she loved the Keeper before, not even when things were at their best. I wondered what it meant that she could say it to me when things seemed to be at their worst.

* * *

When Cicero got back with Garnag a few hours later, Hecate was already long gone. As the jester came stumbling in, looking as bone-weary as I had ever seen him, I understood what Hecate had meant by "hurting the ones she loved." His face was covered in days-old bruises, fading from blue and purple to yellow as they healed. They didn't look especially damaging, but they were extensive. Had Hecate pushed him off a cliff?

No one would look at him as he entered Sanctuary. Conversation died off into blank silence when he set foot in the main hall. His wild eyes jerked from person to person as though seeking Hecate's face among the assembled assassins, his hands hovering in front of him like crippled birds. Nazir took the initiative on approaching Cicero; I knew it had to have been quite the burden for him, since he didn't care much for the jester at the best of times, but Hecate had left him in charge. Nazir was nothing if not dutiful. I went with him in the hopes of keeping Cicero calm if things went badly.

"She's gone," Nazir said simply. "She said not to go looking for her, and that she'd be back when she was good and ready."

"But…" Cicero began, then stopped and looked at his fluttering hands. He clenched them into fists and dropped them to his sides, clearly trying to gain some semblance of control. "What will we do without the Listener?"

"We still have a backlog of contracts if you're worried about work," Nazir started.

"No, no, no, no, no!" Cicero shrieked, stomping his feet like a spoiled child. "The contracts are not what Cicero is talking about! Without the Listener, there is no Brotherhood! Who will hear Mother's voice without her?"

"We were doing just fine without a Listener for years," Nazir hissed, so low that I think Cicero and I were the only ones who could hear him.

"Led by a traitorous whore?" Cicero sneered. Nazir's hand dropped to the hilt of his scimitar, and Cicero's eyes lit up like he had just won some long-standing battle of wills. I stepped between them—probably the most dangerous place in Skyrim at that moment—and held out my hands.

"That's enough of that!" I shouted. Across the room, Geldii and Elbent suddenly seemed to remember that they had to be somewhere else. Meena continued to watch, a broad and vicious smile on her face at the idea of imminent bloodshed. "Hecate's gone. We don't know how long. And it's up to us to set a good example for the others."

"Aventus is right," came Babette's lilting voice from above. We all looked up to see the girl coming down into the main hall from her room. I hadn't realized how late it had gotten; for Babette to be up and dressed, it had to be well past sundown.

"Now she says I'm right," I muttered to myself.

"If it happened more often, I'd say it more often," she teased as she walked up to us. She looked back and forth between Cicero and Nazir, a scowl forming on her childish face. "Shame on both of you. You're grown men. Act like it."

Nazir pulled his hand away from his scimitar, and even Cicero had the good grace to look slightly abashed. I relaxed only slightly. Either of them could quick-draw faster than my eye could follow, so there was no guarantee that violence wasn't still forthcoming.

"That's better," Babette said. "Eiruki filled me in on what's happened." I looked around; sure enough, Eiruki was nowhere to be seen. I wondered what had compelled her to go speak to Babette. "With Hecate gone, the five of us are the senior members of the Brotherhood. The new recruits will look to us for guidance. If they see us fighting with one another, it will cause problems." She glared at Cicero and Nazir again, a stern expression that was somehow more terrifying on her youthful face. "You two are going to shake hands and apologize."

Both Nazir and Cicero started to protest. Babette stamped on delicate foot on the ground and crossed her arms, which shut both of them right up. More than ever, I wondered what secret this girl possessed that made her so intimidating to grown men.

"The unchild is right," Cicero muttered. He stuck out a hand toward Nazir stiffly, not looking at the Redguard.

"I didn't notice an apology in there," Nazir returned, but took Cicero's hand anyway.

"Good!" Babette said, clapping her hands together in mock cheer. "I'm going to go do damage control with the recruits who were here for your little outburst." She looked at the jester. "Keeper, I expect you to rest for a day or two before returning to your duties. Consider it a strong suggestion from your doctor." The jester nodded, seeming to droop suddenly under his own weight as his adrenaline ran out. He turned and made his way toward the private rooms.

"I could have taken him," Nazir snarled as soon as Cicero was out of earshot.

"That's not the point," Babette replied coldly. "Hecate left you in charge. Like it or not, that fool is our brother too, so you have to watch out for him like you would for me or Aventus."

Nazir shook his head and stormed off to his office. Meena slunk out of the main hall as well, leaving Babette and me alone together.

"Thanks," I said. "I was really worried that they were going to fight."

"I didn't do it for Cicero," Babette hissed. "I did it for Nazir. We've been friends a long time, and Cicero would have killed him."

"You really think so?" I asked, surprised. "I mean, Cicero really believes in the Tenets, and they say for Brotherhood members to not kill each other."

"I don't think the Tenets would stop him," she said. "I think that they would just give him a justification. He would say that Nazir had been 'disrespecting the Night Mother' or that Nazir drawing first had shown an intention to violate the Tenets." She shook her head. "Religious fanatics can always justify breaking their own rules."

"If you hate Cicero so much, then why are you always so polite to him?"

"It doesn't matter what I feel about Cicero one way or the other," Babette said simply. "Hecate is in love with the fool, so he's not going anywhere. At least not until one of them dies. I can afford to wait, though." She looked at me suddenly, like she realized she had almost given away too much.

"Who are you, Babette?" I asked. "Who are you, really?"

Her face fell slightly and she stepped toward me, laying a cold hand on my arm.

"Ask me again after Hecate comes home, okay?" she begged. I had never heard her sound so mournful before, so I only nodded my agreement. She smiled wanly and started to step away. Then she stopped and impulsively leaned in to kiss me on the cheek. As her lips lingered near my ear, she whispered, "When you do, I'll ask you something important too."

Then she skipped away, leaving me to wonder what she meant.

* * *

The next few months were wretched for everyone involved.

Cicero had been in a good place through most of the last year, but that had been slowly breaking down since just before New Life Day. With Hecate gone, it accelerated. Days would go by where none of us laid eyes on the Fool of Hearts, only dimly hearing him rant, rage, sing, or cry from his sealed room or from the Night Mother's shrine. When he did make appearances he was invariably in a foul mood, screaming at anyone for little to no reason.

It didn't help that Eiruki kept leaving little offerings at the Night Mother's shrine. Cicero seemed to think that the girl was intentionally taunting him, sneaking in to leave objects behind as a way of mocking him. He would save most of his venom for the Nord girl, shouting and screeching at her whenever their paths crossed. With Hecate gone, and Nazir in a barely-stable truce with the jester, no one was willing to check Cicero's behavior.

Babette seemed to be avoiding me. Whenever I would try to spend time with her, she was always busy or out. The only time that I could get her to be near me was when I would put on little musical performances for the Brotherhood. Even then, she would come in after I started, sit near the back, and leave before I finished.

One positive thing that came out of those long months of drifting was that I found the drive to actually become good with my mandolin. While I had been embarrassed about practicing in public before—leading to an unfortunate incident involving Eiruki and a troll—I felt that the Brotherhood needed its morale kept up now more than ever. I had spent much of the last year trying to find ways to keep Cicero from breaking down; now that I had failed at that task, even if it wasn't really my fault, I felt responsible for keeping everyone else's spirits up too.

Nazir was an adequate leader in Hecate's absence. As Speaker of the Dark Brotherhood, he had decades of experience in dealing with people, which made him good at arbitrating disputes and keeping the work flowing. Nothing was worse than a bunch of bored assassins, after all.

Still, just knowing that the Listener was absent—and not knowing when she might come back—was wearing on everyone's nerves. Nazir did his best to keep as many people out of Sanctuary at all times as possible, sending us out in pairs or threes even on the simplest of missions just to keep us busy. I must have gone on four or five contracts during that time. Whenever I got back to Sanctuary, the first thing I did was check on Cicero to see how he was doing.

"I can't stand seeing Cicero like this," I complained to Nazir after finding the fool curled up at the foot of the Night Mother's coffin. He had been asleep, his face streaked with tears. Even unconscious, he was whimpering and mouthing Hecate's name, as though his torments followed him down into the dark Void of sleep.

"I don't know," Nazir replied, cutting up a tomato for the night's repast. "I kind of prefer him like this." I looked at the Redguard sharply, then relaxed when I realized that he was being sarcastic as usual. Months of dealing with Cicero's madness, Eiruki's bizarre behavior, and Babette's isolation had left me just as jumpy and irritable as everyone else.

"I know you don't like Cicero very much," I started saying, to which Nazir snorted loudly. I glared at him and then continued, "But he's part of our family."

"Part of your family, maybe," Nazir said with bitter melancholy. "My family included Astrid and Veezara and Festus Krex and Gabriella and Arnbjorn!"

With each name, Nazir's voice became louder and louder, his knife slamming into the cutting board more firmly. On the last exclamation, the knife hit the board hard enough to splinter it and to splatter the remaining half of a tomato into pulp and ruined skin. Nazir threw the blunted knife across the room, then swept the mess of tomato and cutting board off the counter with an angry cry. I walked over and laid a hand on Nazir's arm.

"Cicero didn't kill them," I said softly. "Hecate didn't either."

"I know that!" he shouted, then repeated more calmly. "I know that. I was there."

"Then why do you blame him?" I asked.

"Everything changed when that damned fool came around," Nazir replied with a low, angry tone. "If he hadn't shown up, maybe…"

"Maybe what?" I interrupted. "Maybe Astrid wouldn't have betrayed the Brotherhood for her own selfishness?" Nazir jerked away from my hand and looked at me with betrayed eyes. "That's what happened, isn't it? Astrid sold out someone she recruited personally to keep her own power." Nazir sat down heavily in a nearby chair, looking old and weathered for the first time since I'd met him "I know it seems easier to blame Cicero. You knew Astrid and the others a long time, and Cicero was new. But you can't keep going on like this, Nazir. Hecate loves Cicero…"

"And not you?" he asked. It was my turn to be shocked. "Don't look so surprised, boy. You being in love with Hecate is the worst kept secret in Sanctuary. Hell, I think she's the only one who doesn't know." My face started burning with shame and I sat down too; my legs felt wobbly and my stomach roiled.

"She loves Cicero," I said bitterly, "and not me." I cleared my throat to get rid of the lump that was forming there before I went on. "None of that matters. We're all family now. Hecate brought us together, and without her we're falling apart."

"Why don't you go get her then?" Nazir asked. "If you think it's so important, you should do something about it."

"She wouldn't come back for me," I said simply. "You're the Speaker. You might be able to talk her into coming back."

"Not me," he said with a dark chuckle. "Even if I thought it would do any good—which I don't—she ordered me to not come after her or tell anyone where she went."

"Then why do you think I would know where to find her?" I asked, playing dumb. Nazir shot me a look that spoke volumes.

"Please don't insult my intelligence," he groused. "She's got a soft spot for you. Of course she told you where she went."

"Only by accident," I admitted. "I still don't think she'd come back for me."

"How is it that we're all so dependent on a woman who needs us so little?" Nazir mused.

"She needs us," I insisted, "just not the same way we need her." I thought about it, trying to put what I felt into words. "Hecate depends on us to be her family, and we depend on her to remind us that we are one."

"Maybe you're right," Nazir admitted grudgingly. "But there's no way to make her come home before she's ready."

"She would come back for Cicero," I said quietly. "But Hecate ordered you not to say anything, and I promised that I wouldn't." My brain churned as I tried to think of a way around these problems. Nazir stood and put a heavy hand on my shoulder.

"Aventus," he said, not unkindly, "you once asked me what I thought your greatest flaw was." I nodded. "I didn't want to tell you, because I thought you should figure it out for yourself. But now I think it might just be something you have to hear from someone else."

"Why now?" I asked.

"Because it's relevant," Nazir replied. "Your problem is that you make promises too easily." I opened my mouth to respond, but he held up a hand to quiet me before continuing. "What I mean is that you feel like you're bound by your word. I know that you grew up in Windhelm, and that honor is important to the Nords you grew up with… But we're assassins, Aventus. Honor is meaningless to us. It's just a burden that will get you killed someday. Even if it doesn't, it will cause you nothing but pain."

"What are you saying, Nazir?" I asked desperately.

"I'm saying that some promises are made to be broken," he said. "The only things you should feel beholden to are the Tenets and the Night Mother herself. Beyond that, nothing is forbidden and everything is permitted." He started to walk back to the kitchen counter to clean up the mess he had made. "If you think something is important, you should be prepared to fight for it—and assassins never fight fair."

I nodded and walked out of the kitchen. I knew what I had to do.

* * *

"Hecate's coming home," I said as I walked into Babette's room. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, reading a book while Pavot was curled up at her feet. The ice wolf was no longer a cub by any stretch of the imagination, and his position next to her bed made him look like a furry footstool more than anything.

"How do you know?" she asked, tucking a bookmark into the tome to keep her place before setting it aside.

"Cicero went to bring her home," I replied, taking a place next to her on the bed. "It shouldn't be more than a week or two."

"That's still not a guarantee," she said.

"Just stop it," I said. She looked at me in surprise as I reached over and took her hand. "I've been your brother for almost two years now, almost as long as Meena's been your sister. Do you think I'm an idiot, Babette?"

"Of course not," she said immediately.

"Then why treat me like one?" I asked, letting some of the real hurt I felt show. "You hid the truth from me, then lied about it, then made fun of me when I tried to guess. I just can't take this anymore." I looked her in the eyes as I made my final push for the truth. "Just tell me what you are. Please."

She paused, seeming to hesitate about whether to agree or not. Finally, after a long moment, she nodded.

Babette concentrated, her brow furrowing in effort. Her face seemed to change in the flickering torchlight, undergoing a subtle transformation into something leaner and hungrier. Her eyes became pools of crimson, and her teeth sharpened to points as I watched. Her delicate hands were tipped with delicate claws, and her overall appearance seemed to become more powerful somehow.

"Aventus," she whispered as she drew her legs up onto the bed and turned to me, "I'm a vampire."

I stared at her, taken in by the feral power of her new appearance. The wheels in my mind turned, connecting unrelated facts together in their proper order for the first time. Gods, I was stupid. I opened my mouth to say something clever.

"Oooooohhhh," was all that came out, a long exhalation indicative of my basic idiocy. Smooth, Aventus. Real smooth.

"It's an incredible gift, Aventus," Babette whispered, leaning closer to me, "a Dark Gift." She was close enough now that I could feel her cold breath on my cheek. "It makes you faster, stronger, tougher than any human. It opens a new world of power up to you. There are downsides, yes, but after a while you don't even miss the sun. And you can live forever, unchanging and young eternally."

"Forever?" I asked. I couldn't deny that living forever sounded pretty great.

"Oh yes," she nodded. "Barring violence, you become immortal—like the dragons, or the daedra."

"How…" I trailed off, unsure if what I was going to ask was rude or not.

"How old am I?" she said with a laugh. "Over three hundred years old." I whistled a low note. "I've survived an Era, Aventus. I've seen the rise, fall, and return of the Dark Brotherhood. I'm going to outlive everyone we know, except maybe Hecate."

"It seems awfully lonely," I said.

"It can be," she admitted. "That's why I-"

"Wait," I interrupted. "What do you mean 'except maybe Hecate'?"

"Well, she's the Dragonborn," Babette said, a look of annoyance on her face. "She has the soul of a dragon, so she shares their life span. For every dragon soul she steals, she gains a portion of their longevity, keeping her young." She laughed gaily. "It won't be forever, though. Not like us."

"Us?" I asked dumbly.

"I want you to be like me," Babette said. "I want to give you the Dark Gift, to make you a vampire."

"Oh," I said.

"What's wrong?" she asked. "You should be honored. In three hundred years, I've never made this offer to anyone else. I want us to be together forever, Aventus."

My mind raced with the information she had given me. Learning her secret wasn't nearly as satisfying as I had hoped it would be, but she had told me something even better. By the time I was a grown man, Hecate would still be young and beautiful—and Cicero would be an old man. I had promised myself that I wouldn't give up on her, and for the first time ever I had real hope that I could achieve my dreams.

And all I had to do to pursue them was to crush Babette's.

"I am honored," I said, taking her hands in mine. "I understand what this means to you, sister." Her face fell at my calling her "sister," and her blood-red eyes changed back to their normal human hues. "I'm more flattered than you can imagine… but I don't want to be a child forever. I want to grow up, to become a man. I don't even really know who I am yet—and I'll never find out if I take your offer."

"Don't you like me, Aventus?" she asked, her voice small and childish.

"I love you, Babette," I replied, "as my sister, and my best friend. But there's someone else I like. I have to grow up so she can see me as a man, and not a little boy."

"Get out," Babette rasped, turning away from me.

"I'm sorry," was all I could say as I stood up and held out a hand toward her.

"GET OUT!" she screamed, turning toward me with a demonic look on her face. Her eyes burned like twin pools of fire, and all of her teeth were vicious fangs. I backed away from her as fast as I could, afraid to turn my back. Pavot trotted out with me, whining the whole way. The door slammed shut in my face without Babette ever moving from her bed. Standing in the hallway, I could hear her begin to sob.

"That could have gone better," I muttered, dropping down into a crouch to run my hand over the ice wolf's head. Pavot whimpered at my touch, and threw my arms around his furry neck, burying my face in his haunches as I started crying too.

* * *

I don't know what Cicero said to Hecate when he went to High Hrothgar. I only knew that he came back a week and a half later with our wayward Listener in tow, and that the two of them seemed more at peace together. There were celebrations aplenty and a renewed sense of family that brought us all closer together. The Brotherhood stood together once more.

I had thought that breaking my promise to Hecate would bring Cicero back to something resembling sanity as well as bringing my family back together. Overall, he seemed calmer, but his psychotic episode with Eiruki had proven that he was still dangerously unstable. Not even telling him where Hecate had gone spared me from a serious beating when I intervened on Eiruki's behalf. Even though he and Hecate were doing better together, something was still eating at the jester—and it worried me.

Babette was avoiding me, but that was to be expected. I had hurt her—deeply. I hoped that someday she could forgive me. I really did love Babette, but I couldn't imagine it just being the two of us together forever. I had struggled too hard to see myself as an adult to choose to be a child for eternity. I had hurt her by keeping a promise to myself, just like Nazir had warned me about.

As I sat in the makeshift conservatory, holding my mandolin across my lap, I wondered if Eiruki knew more than I did about not fighting fair. All of her little habits had drawn me in completely, making me concerned for her well-being and wanting to protect her. In retrospect, it seemed almost calculated. Had I been so wrapped up in my concern for Hecate that I had missed signs of Eiruki's interest in me? And even if she was interested in me, was I interested back? Especially after all I had given up to pursue my dreams of Hecate?

_Sweet mother, sweet mother_, I thought. _What should I do?_

But I wasn't the Listener, so the Night Mother held no answers. Even if I were the Listener, I doubt that she would deign to give me advice about my love life—or lack thereof. No, when it came to these things, I was on my own. Forces seemed to be pulling at me from every direction.

Soon, something had to give.

I just hoped that I could figure it all out before I lost something else that was priceless.

* * *

…_to be continued…_


	20. Chapter 20: Breaking Point

**Chapter 20: Breaking Point**

"Aventus!" Deesei hissed as she shook my shoulder. I groggily opened my eyes.

"What time is it?" I asked, my tongue thick and my eyes heavy. I had stayed up way too late the night before drinking with Garnag. Say what you would about the old orc slowing down with his advanced years, he could still pack away ale better than most people half his age.

Honestly, I had been doing too much of that sort of thing lately. I didn't enjoy the taste of mead or ale that much, but after the first couple, you didn't care so much about the taste anymore. I mostly was just bored out of my mind waiting for a new contract to come in, and sick and tired of worrying constantly about women. The Night Mother had been silent since Hecate had come home, leading to a gradual drying-up of the remaining work, even though spring and summer were usually our busiest seasons.

In the time-honored tradition of young professionals since the beginning of time, I had turned to drink to carry me through the boredom and frustration. This was the first time I had drunk enough to have a hangover, though. Given how bad I felt, I was pretty sure I wouldn't be drinking as much in the future.

My stomach heaved painfully and I amended my prediction to "not drinking again, ever."

"Almost dinner time," the Argonian said as she crossed her arms and swished her tail back and forth in annoyance. I groaned and tried to sit up.

"Sweet mother," I cursed as I blinked in the too-bright candlelight.

"You know better than to drink yourself sick," Deesei chided. "At least, I thought you did."

"It certainly wasn't my intention," I muttered as I swung my legs off the bed and groped around for a clean shirt. I was only wearing shortpants, but I didn't feel as self-conscious about being mostly naked in front of Deesei as I would have with Babette or Eiruki. I was pretty sure that the lizard-woman wasn't attracted to humans or elves, which somehow made it less awkward.

"Well, far be it from me to awaken a drunkard from his stupor," she replied with mock-haughtiness, "but Hecate wants to see you after dinner. Given your recent schedule, I wasn't sure if you would be at dinner, so…"

"Thanks, Deesei," I said with a wan smile. I felt like the Void warmed over, but it comforted me to have someone watching out for me. Deesei and I weren't as close as I was with Garnag—or as close as I had been with Babette—but we had a shared interest in woodcraft and tracking, and I got along with Argonians better than most humans. "I appreciate it."

"No problem, landstrider," she said with a lizard grin. I smiled back, more genuinely this time. She paused for a moment, as though torn about something.

"Something going on?" I jibed.

"Meena's making her move," Deesei whispered. "I'm just letting you know so you can make the right choice."

With that cryptic utterance, she turned and quickly left the common sleeping room. I didn't know if I was stupider than usual from drinking too much or if she just hadn't made any sense at all, but I simply couldn't figure out what in Oblivion she was talking about. Working through the complexities of getting dressed was difficult enough for me at the moment.

When I finally managed to get into my clothes and stumble out into Sanctuary, I saw a gathering crowd of assassins out in the main hall. Scanning the group, I could see everyone but Hecate, Meena and Babette. Were we so out of work that everyone was actually home for once? Thinking about it, I recalled that Hecate hadn't given us any new missions in the week and a half she had been home from High Hrothgar. Doing some basic math told me that Vedave and Anaril had been the last two out, and I could see them standing together and speaking in low tones on the far side of the room.

As I stumbled in, probably looking the worse for wear from my night of debauchery, everyone glanced over at me and then went back to their private conversations. I looked around, seeing Nazir and Elbent standing together near Cicero, who was juggling plates and humming as Garnag watched. Eiruki was sitting next to the fireplace, her head down and her hair in her face as usual, with Geldii sitting across from her in full armor. Deesei had gone to stand with the two mer. Nazir and Elbent kept shooting suspicious glances at the two male mer and the Argonian, who in turn would whisper among themselves and look back nervously.

What in Sithis' name was going on?

"What's going on, Nazir?" I asked in low tones as I approached them. I looked over at Deesei, who looked at me and shook her head sadly, as though I had made some sort of disappointing decision.

"Meena's making her move," he said cryptically.

"Okay…" I said, rolling one hand to indicate that he should keep going. Nazir looked at me and quirked an eyebrow.

"By Sithis, you're serious," he cursed.

"I usually am," I responded, perhaps a little sharper than I meant to. I was getting tired of no one making any sense. Nazir pulled me a little ways off from Cicero and Garnag, then leaned in to whisper to me conspiratorially.

"Meena plans to challenge Hecate for leadership of the Dark Brotherhood," he said as quietly as he could.

"What?!" I shouted, leading everyone to turn to stare at me. Cicero dropped a plate, barely catching it on his extended foot, and shot me a dirty look. "What?" I asked, quieter. "What are you talking about?"

"Meena's been plotting to overthrow Hecate and take her place as the Listener," Nazir continued. "Garnag and I found out a couple of weeks ago when Elbent told us about it. Apparently, she's been trying to recruit the newer members to support her."

"And you didn't think I needed to know about this before now?" I asked angrily.

"Your loyalty's never been in question," Nazir said simply. I was taken aback by the statement. I had been all ready to be offended at being left out because of my age again. I hadn't even considered that the others would just consider me so dependable that they didn't need to bring me in to oppose a conspiracy.

"Does Cicero know?" I asked.

"Meena's alive, isn't she?" Nazir asked in response. I nodded my understanding. If Cicero had heard that Meena was planning to move against Hecate, the Khajiit wouldn't have lived through the night.

After I had broken my promise to Hecate and told Cicero where she had gone, I thought that I might have earned some goodwill from the jester. Getting my ass handed to me when I covered for Eiruki's stupid prank showed me how futile a hope that had been. Cicero's madness was a serious danger to the people around him, regardless of my respect for his abilities.

"I'd say that I can't believe she would do this," I said bitterly, "but that would be a lie. Meena's always been too gods-damned ambitious for her own good."

"I tried to reason with her," Nazir said, shaking his head, "but she said that she had the Night Mother's blessing to try."

I whistled a low note. I doubted that Meena actually had any sort of sanction from the Night Mother, but the Unholy Matron's recent silence would certainly look that way to the more impressionable members of our family.

At that moment, Meena came striding into the main hall, decked out head to toe in the red and black leather armor of the Dark Brotherhood. She cut a striking figure wearing the colors of our bloody family, though I knew that it was purely for show. In the nearly two years I had known Meena, she had never once worn what I thought of as our "dress uniform." Sure enough, I could see Vedave, Anaril and Deesei stand up a little straighter when she came into the room, looking like a furry angel of death.

My stomach churned again, and it wasn't entirely from my hangover. I felt genuinely disappointed in Deesei for backing Meena over Hecate. I didn't know either Vedave or Anaril well enough to feel one way or the other about it, but I had thought that Deesei was my friend as well as my sister-in-arms. My face burned in anger, and Nazir clapped a hand on my shoulder to keep me from doing anything foolish.

Meena walked toward the private rooms as though taking a casual stroll, just in time for Hecate to walk out of Babette's room. Babette stood behind her in the doorway, her hair lank and unbrushed. I felt a serious twinge of guilt at seeing the vampire girl. We had been best friends for most of the last two years, and I had broken her heart when I turned down her offer of immortality. Between her anger at me and Eiruki's bizarre affections, it was no wonder that I had started drinking more.

Hecate was wearing her usual casual outfit, a light and sleeveless shirt with loose woolen pants and soft-soled shoes. Meena was in full armor, including fingerless gloves to let her natural claws out. True to form, she had made certain to have every possible advantage when she confronted her foe.

"Hecate," Meena said as she walked into the Listener's path, her voice a little too loud for it to not be a performance. "Has the Night Mother spoken to you yet?"

"You know she hasn't," Hecate responded immediately. She looked around, seeming to notice the gathered crowd for the first time. The Khajiit smiled her most vicious smile, her tail swishing in anticipation.

"It seems to Meena that the Listener is a position no longer being filled," Meena sneered. She put her paws on her hips and tilted her chin up arrogantly. "Meena prayed to the Night Mother, and the Night Mother answered with her silence. Meena challenges for Hecate for leadership of the Dark Brotherhood!"

I was pleased to hear Cicero's indignant shriek at Meena's challenge. It warmed my heart to know that I wasn't the only one out of the loop in this particular matter. Nazir and Elbent moved to hold Cicero back so that he couldn't interfere with the showdown, while Garnag's fingertips glowed with the unmistakable glint of magic. I could only guess that he was ready to use his sorcery to paralyze Cicero if raw muscle couldn't hold the Keeper back.

"Don't do this, Meena," Hecate warned. I smiled at her confidence, even when at a disadvantage. Babette stepped forward to show her support for the Listener, and Hecate waved her back.

"What can you possibly do?" Meena smirked, crossing her arms. "Surrender."

"Never," Hecate replied. She tossed her long black hair to get it out of her line of sight and took a broad fighting stance. "If you want the Brotherhood, it's going to be over my dead body."

It was time.

Meena glanced nervously around the room, her confidence shaken by Hecate's stern refusal. My smile became broader at the sight of the Khajiit's sudden confusion. I don't know what was running through Meena's head when she decided to do this, but she had clearly thought that intimidation or threat of force would be enough to carry the day. She didn't know Hecate half as well as she thought she did. If Meena had ever bothered to notice anything beyond the tips of her whiskers, she might have remembered that Hecate wasn't just the Listener of the Dark Brotherhood.

She was also Diana, Dragonborn. In the old tongue, the language of dragons, she was _Dovahkiin_. The stories said that when the dragons had ravaged Skyrim, she was the one they feared. When Alduin the World-Eater threatened all of Nirn, she had walked between the borders of life and death to protect the world from destruction.

Meena was small change—and she didn't even know it.

"So be it!" Meena screamed, apparently unwilling to step down and lose face in front of the others. She yowled a battle cry and leapt for Hecate, claws extended. She was fast, I had to give her that.

Hecate was faster.

It occurred to me as Hecate ducked and weaved between Meena's fierce strikes that I had never gotten the opportunity to watch our Listener fight before. She never seemed to train like the rest of us, and she only went on contract with Cicero, so I had been slightly worried that her skills in hand to hand combat had become rusty. I should have realized that it was a futile worry. Meena looked like a drunken brawler next to Hecate's grace and speed. The Khajiit never landed a single blow on the Listener.

"I thought we were going to fight, cat," Hecate laughed, her black hair flowing behind her like a dark river. She almost seemed to be dancing with her opponent, her footwork consistently giving her the advantage over Meena's lurching, overextended blows.

"Don't laugh at me!" Meena screamed, her voice jagged and desperate. If her swings had been wide and powerful before, her growing anger made them become wild and predictable. The fight was already over. It only remained for Hecate to finish it, but I knew that after being challenged publicly Hecate couldn't simply beat Meena—she would have to destroy her, to defeat her so completely that nothing like this could ever happen again.

Strangely, despite not liking Meena very much and being genuinely angry that she had turned on Hecate like this, I found myself hoping that her defeat didn't entail death. Killing Meena would make Hecate look bad, no matter how justified, and… Well, Meena was my sister. She was a bizarre, possibly insane sister, but she was no crazier than Cicero in most ways—and less dangerous in most, if only because she was about as subtle as a bag full of rocks.

I thought about that a moment and wondered what it said about me, since her little coup had managed to happen right under my nose.

Meena and Hecate traded quiet barbs as they fought, low enough that only the other could hear what was said. I wasn't yet good enough at lip-reading to know what was being exchanged, but Meena kept growing angrier and angrier with each passing moment. As Meena lashed out with her claws one last time, Hecate grabbed the Khajiit by the wrists, shifted her weight off-center, and kicked her in the midriff. Meena gasped for breath and doubled over, to which Hecate responded by fiercely head-butting the rebellious cat-kin. Meena reeled with pain and Hecate twisted her wrists, flipping the Khajiit to the ground and putting a foot on her neck.

From the position she was in—hands grasped together and Hecate's weight resting mostly on her collarbone—Meena had to have known that Hecate could snap her neck with a second's effort. Instead, Hecate let go of Meena's hands, though she didn't remove her foot from the subdued assassin's throat.

"I would never have surrendered," she declared, obviously talking not just to Meena but to all of the Brotherhood, "but that doesn't mean you can't. I obey the Tenets, sister. Do you yield?"

Meena nodded slowly, spreading her arms and laying very flat. I wasn't sure what the gesture meant, but it was apparently enough for Hecate. The Listener took her foot off Meena's throat and leaned down to offer her a hand up, a magnanimous show of acceptance. I lifted my hands to applaud, but stopped when I heard Eiruki shouting.

"She did it! She did it!" came a high-pitched cry that I could only vaguely associate with the meek, almost-silent Nord girl. I turned to look at her, along with almost everyone else present; she was jumping up and down, pumping one fist in the air as she cheered. She stopped when she noticed us all staring, pulling up one hand in front of her mouth sheepishly as her face began to turn bright red.

Hecate coughed to draw everyone's attention away from the embarrassed Eiruki.

"Just because I left for three months does not mean I am weak or not dedicated to this group," she said in a firm, clear voice. "It also will not happen again. I am here and I am the Listener!" She pointed towards the Night Mother's shrine. "I would also remind everyone that the Night Mother is our Matron. She speaks when she wills it! The Lady does not bend to our will or our schedule. We bend to hers as loyal children." She cast her sapphire-blue eyes across the gathered assassins, stern but forgiving. "Dismissed!"

* * *

Deesei was sitting on the edge of her bed, polishing a dagger with a sour look on her face when I got back to the common sleeping room.

I knew that Hecate was in the Night Mother's shrine, so I could only guess that the Matron's silence had been broken with the Listener's victory. Meena was skulking somewhere in the deeper parts of Sanctuary, while most everyone else had gone out for the night. The disruption to our usual routines had made it impossible for Nazir to put together a real dinner, so I had just grabbed a bite out of the kitchen before deciding that I was too grungy for human company and getting a bath.

Part of me was grateful that Eiruki hadn't tried throwing herself at me while I was bathing. The rest of me was wondering why she hadn't. I tried my best to not think about her warm lips, her soft curves… That line of thought made me even more grateful that baths in Sanctuary were inevitably cold.

After I dried off and headed back to change clothes, I caught sight of the Argonian. At first, I wasn't going to say anything to her. I intended to just change clothes and slip back out, hopefully without her ever even seeing me. Once I was in fresh clothes, though, I found myself drifting over toward where she was sitting, almost in spite of myself. Deesei pointedly ignored me, even after I was close enough that I could nearly touch her. Long moments of silence passed, punctuated only by the dull rasp of whetstone meeting steel.

"Why?" I finally asked. She looked up at me with narrowed eyes. I took a breath and tried again. "Why support Meena?"

Deesei shrugged, trying to look nonchalant but only seeming more bitter for it. "She said that Hecate had abandoned us over a lover's spat with Cicero. It hardly seemed professional to me. Even after she came back, who knew if she was just going to take off again the next time she quarreled with the Keeper?"

"That's it?" I pressed. It didn't sound like enough to turn against the leader of the Dark Brotherhood—but maybe I was too close to the problem.

"Not all," Deesei sighed. She sheathed the dagger she was sharpening and tossed it into her trunk. "Meena promised to give more responsibility and position to us, something I suppose you don't understand."

"I don't," I admitted. "You and Anaril and Vedave are still really new, and-"

"It's not how new we are," she interrupted. "Don't tell me you think it's a coincidence that all three of the important positions in the Dark Brotherhood are filled with humans?"

I was taken aback by the statement. It was simply something that had never mattered to me.

"You really think that's the case?" I asked, sitting down on the bed opposite Deesei's.

"Of course you wouldn't see it," Deesei said, shaking her head almost sadly. "You're human too."

"Deesei…" I started, trying to think of a polite way to say what I was thinking. In the end, I couldn't think of any nicer way to put it, so I just said, "That's the most racist thing I've heard in years." She looked at me with shock and I pressed on before she tried to interrupt me again. "You've only been here a few months. You can't expect position right away, no matter what race you are. Everyone here is equal under the Night Mother."

"I guess time will tell," was all she would say before getting up and leaving.

I sighed as I watched her walk out of the room. I couldn't be mad at her anymore; I was too used to racism myself to not understand where she was coming from. Still, I hoped that it was something she could overcome in time. Trust was hard to build with people who had seen it frequently betrayed.

Rather than sit around in Sanctuary alone and bored, or practice my mandolin some more, I decided to go see if Hecate had any work for me.

* * *

As it turned out, I had to wait around for a while anyway outside of Nazir's office while he and Hecate discussed the contracts that she had received from the Night Mother. I was relieved to hear that our Unholy Matron wasn't angry at Hecate any longer—if she even had been in the first place—and that things could start getting back to normal.

"Eavesdropping?" Hecate teased as she walked out of the office. I had been leaning up against the wall, arms crossed, and had actually started to drift off a little. Hecate startled me enough that I went off-balance and had to pinwheel my arms to catch myself.

"Not at all, oh mighty Listener," I said sarcastically as I stood back up and stretched to pop my back and knees. "Just waiting for some work." As I stood there in the hallway with her, I couldn't help but notice that I was at eye-level with Hecate, and I didn't think I had finished growing yet. The Listener wasn't all that tall—Imperials usually weren't, and she was short even for an Imperial woman—but it made me wonder how tall I was going to wind up being.

"That will have to wait," she told me. "I was hoping to sit down and talk to you a little while after dinner, before everything happened. Did Deesei not tell you?"

I mentally groaned and barely kept from slapping myself in the forehead. After finding out about Meena's attempted coup, I had just assumed that she had made up Hecate wanting to see me as an excuse to have me present for the fight. Had Deesei not believed in Meena's ability to win the fight after all? Or was doing our superiors' bidding just second nature for us? I didn't feel like trying to figure it out, so I just followed Hecate to one of the tables in the common room.

"Good work with Meena," I said to break the silence.

"I just hope it will stick," Hecate replied. "What I'm more worried about is that people sided with her. I recruited all of them personally, so seeing them side against me is a little disheartening."

"I talked a little about it with Deesei," I told her. Hecate leaned forward to indicate that I should go on. "Well, Meena got them on their side by appealing to their fear. You and Nazir have always told me that the unknown breeds fear—it's one of our best tools, after all—but the fact is that while you might have recruited them, it's Meena that they know. You're so distant most of the time that it's hard for the new people to get to know you. Deesei was worried that you would never promote her because she's not human."

"That's…" Hecate trailed off, then bit her knuckle thoughtfully. "Given how we recruited her, I can see her point, actually."

"Divines only know what she told Vedave and Anaril to win them over," I continued, "but it worked because they don't know you as well as I do." She cocked an eyebrow at me and I quickly added, "I mean, as well as us older recruits. The ones who were here at the beginning."

"What do you think I should do?" Hecate asked. I was shocked that she actually seemed to want my opinion.

"Get to know Deesei better," I said. "Go hunting with her or something. She likes hunting." I shrugged. "I don't know Vedave or Anaril that well, so I can't give any advice there."

"I'll keep it in mind," she said with forced cheer. Her eyes flicked nervously away from me. Clearly, there was something more she wanted to talk to me about.

"So what else did you want to tell me?" I asked, preferring to get right to the point instead of worrying about whatever it might be.

"I heard that Babette finally told you," Hecate finally said. I nodded; it wasn't really surprising that this was what she wanted to talk about. She and Babette were friends, on top of Hecate being the Listener.

"She asked me if I wanted to be a vampire," I said simply. "I said no. She… didn't take it very well." I cleared my throat and looked around for something to drink. "Is she going to be, you know… okay?"

"Eventually," Hecate replied. "She's strong, and she's been around a long time. I don't even think she's mad at you so much as she's mad at herself. But it's going to be… awkward… around here for a while. For both of you." She paused again, as though working herself up to something unpleasant or unwelcome. "Which is why I think it might be best for you to be separated for a while. That's why I'm sending you to Solitude-"

"You're sending me away?" I said in shock. I stood up from the table and looked at Hecate with a sense of betrayal. "She lied to me for two years, and I'm the one being punished?"

"Sit down," she commanded in a stern voice. I did as the Listener said, though I kept my sullen look. "It's not a punishment, Aventus. It's an opportunity. It will give both of you the chance to get some distance and time from all of this. And you'll be getting useful training."

"What kind of training?" I asked suspiciously.

"We've made arrangements for you to attend the Bard's College at Solitude," Hecate said. "You'll be trained in music, history, stories—all things you're already interested in."

"As a hobby," I emphasized. "How is this useful for me as an assassin?"

"Aventus," she said, steepling her hands, "being a good assassin isn't just about being a good killer. You have a real talent with people. Everyone in the Brotherhood likes you—and that's saying something, given this bunch."

I sat back, stunned by her assertion. I hadn't thought of myself as someone who was likeable, let alone someone who was widely liked. I supposed that I got along with everyone well enough, though I wasn't as close to all of them as I would have liked.

"People skills are important to our work," she continued, oblivious to my confusion. "Not every assassin has them, but the best assassins do. It's something the current Brotherhood is sorely lacking too, I'm afraid. Information gathering, social mingling, counter-intelligence—all of this is vital to what we do. The Night Mother gives us our most important contracts, but we get just as many from Nazir's spy networks. If the Brotherhood is going to regain its former prestige and power, the kind of training you'll get from the college is vital."

"I'm not being sent away forever?" I asked in a voice that was much smaller than I wanted it to be.

I could feel tears forming in my eyes, and I rubbed them away the back of my hand. I had a moment of vertigo; for just a second I couldn't remember if I was fourteen and an assassin of the Dark Brotherhood, or ten and begging a killer to end the life of a monster in human skin. The moment passed, and Hecate reached across the table to take my hand.

"No, sweety," she whispered. "It would just be for a couple of years."

"I don't want to leave my family," I said, hating how my voice cracked.

"I know," she said. "It's going to be hard for all of us. But it's just for a little while. Hopefully, Babette will calm down by the time you come home, and you'll have gotten important skills." She squeezed my hand. "We'll still be here when you come back, Aventus."

"You can't know that," I said bitterly. "I'm not stupid. I know what we do. Any of you could die while I'm gone!"

"Any of us could die while you're here," she retorted. "But if you go, there's a good chance that you'll have the skills we need to make that less likely in the future."

"When would I leave?" I asked, realizing that I wasn't going to argue my way out of it.

"Soon," Hecate said. "The new semester begins in Hearthfire, so we would want to get you up there and settled in before it starts. We're working on building you a cover story now. You're being enrolled under your real name, so we're going to keep it as close to the truth as possible. You'll just have to remember not to mention the whole hotshot assassin thing." She smirked to let me know she was teasing, and I smiled back a little.

"I'd like to go on contract again before that," I said hopefully. "I don't imagine I'll be killing a lot of people as a bard in training, so I'd appreciate the chance to show my devotion to the Night Mother at least once more before I go."

"I certainly hope that you won't have to wield a blade in Solitude," she chuckled, "though I expect you to keep up with your physical training too." She rummaged in her pocked for a moment before passing me a fancy-looking iron key. "I own a house in Solitude called Proudspire Manor. I'm giving you a key so you can use it as a safe house. You can keep your weapons and armor there, and I've got a little money stashed in the basement for emergencies."

"Thank you," I said sincerely as I took the key. It meant a lot to me that Hecate would trust me with something like this.

"You're welcome," she replied. "Just don't throw any wild parties there, okay?" She winked at me, and I burst out laughing, though the laughter had a jagged edge to it.

Hecate patted my hand again, then stood and walked away, leaving me alone in the common room. I had worked so hard, sacrificed so much, for a family to call my own. Now, to be sent away like this… It was all too much to take in at once.

I suddenly burst out crying, tears running down my face as I wrapped my arms around my chest. I couldn't seem to control the sobs. They threatened to consume me, strangling out my breath and making my stomach clench tighter than a giant's fist. I was distantly grateful that everyone was out of Sanctuary. I couldn't bear the thought of anyone seeing me like this. The crying went on for long minutes, until only dry sobs and heaves wracked my body. Finally, even that was done.

I stared at the cold fireplace, numb and emotionally exhausted. I supposed that I had been right before. Something had to give. I just hadn't expected that it would be me.

* * *

…_to be continued…_


	21. Chapter 21: The Widening Gyre

**Chapter 21: The Widening Gyre**

After so many contracts with Garnag as my partner, it felt strange to be on the road alone again. It was just me and Spot, my dappled mare, traveling south as the weather turned from the warmth of summer to the cool of autumn. Of course, most of the trees in Skyrim were pines and the like, so we didn't get the changing colors of Cyrodiil like Garnag had told me about, but there was a different feeling in the air as Hearthfire approached. It felt like things were winding down, like the beginning of the end.

Or maybe it was just me.

While I loved working with Garnag, and even occasionally tolerated working with other members of my extended family, I couldn't deny that some time alone was really what I needed to get my thoughts in order. I would be leaving Sanctuary soon, only a few more weeks probably, and I felt like getting used to being alone would be useful. Maybe if I could remember what loneliness felt like, it wouldn't be so bad when I had to live through it again. It struck me as horribly appropriate that the city I was being sent to was called "Solitude."

I caught myself brooding again instead of just enjoying the scenery and tried to shake it loose. I looked out at the landscape of beautiful Skyrim to raise my spirits, but found my mood sinking again the closer I got to my destination. I could make out the scars of war all around me, marking the passing of the summer war efforts. Trees had been torn down and burned off to make way for armies at march, and I occasionally saw burnt out or abandoned farms as I made my way down the roads of Falkreath Hold.

Still, I considered myself lucky to have not been hassled by Stormcloak patrols so far. I supposed that they had better things to do than harass random lone travelers. Maybe there were innocent elves or beast-kin to harass instead. That seemed more up their alley to me. Thinking about the Stormcloaks only made the beautiful late summer day seem even sourer to me. Like ants at a picnic, they ruined everything they came in contact with. I didn't know what to expect from Falkreath—Nazir and Hecate didn't like to talk about the place very much—but I couldn't imagine that it would be much better off than Whiterun had become under Stormcloak occupation.

I rubbed my forehead as my mind drifted to unpleasant things. I just wanted to enjoy the road and clear my mind, but it seemed like no matter how far into myself I retreated, all of my worries just followed me down deeper. Only a few weeks before, feeling frustrated about Eiruki's interest in me and Hecate's lack of it had seemed like the biggest problems in the world. Now, I was going on what might be my last contract for years. After working so hard to achieve my goal of being an assassin of the Dark Brotherhood, it felt like ashes in my mouth to be sent away—to a school, of all places.

Once again, I was being treated like a child by the person I most wanted to see me as an adult.

A chilly breeze pulled me out of my dark thoughts. As I bundled my cloak around my shoulders for warmth the road bent ahead to reveal the walls of Falkreath. They weren't as mighty as the walls surrounding Whiterun or Windhelm, barely defensible at all, but they were tall enough to prevent massed charges from all directions. The hills along the southeastern side of the city had been cleared of trees and scrub to make way for a Stormcloak encampment. It was smaller than I would have thought, considering that the city had only been taken earlier this year, but the Stormcloaks' reach had always exceeded their grasp.

A few dozen Stormcloaks milled about the smallish camp, helmets off but weapons near at hand. They ranged in age from clean-faced teenage recruits to weathered old grandfathers. Their armor was scuffed, dented, dirty, and battle-tested. They all had the weary, distant look of men and women who had been fighting for their lives for months with no end in sight, only to find themselves suddenly and shockingly without anyone left to fight. The sight of them reminded me of my other obligation in Falkreath.

When Nazir had offered me the pick of the contracts for my "farewell mission," I had immediately picked the one in Falkreath Hold. He had looked me right in the eyes and shaken his head, but he hadn't said anything. We both knew why I had chosen the city. Since I didn't know when I would get a chance to leave Solitude, or how long the war would drag on, I had wanted to come down this way and look up my old friend Vigurl Deep-Water, who had joined the Stormcloak army sometime last year. I had run into his brother Lasskar in Whiterun a few months back, and I had said that I would try to find Vigurl and see if he was still alive.

Nazir told me once that my greatest character flaw was a misplaced sense of honor. I made promises and then tried to keep them, even when I shouldn't. Assassins had to be pragmatic, he had said; honor has no place in a killer's life. While I acknowledge that he had the best of intentions for me, I had never thought of myself as "honorable." At the age of fourteen, I had killed helpless foes and killed from ambush and killed in open battle. I found that even though I was a decent fighter, I much preferred killing people who couldn't try to kill me back; it was easier, and their helplessness appeased my sense of devotion to the Night Mother.

Still, every now and then, I would get these strange little twinges where I felt that keeping my word was the most important thing in the world. However impractical, however stupid—I wouldn't feel right again until I had tried my best to do as I had promised.

I dismounted from my horse and approached the city's entrance on foot. In my experience, guards reacted better if you weren't looking down on them. Half of them asked you to dismount anyway, so it was really all gain for barely any additional effort.

"What's your business in Falkreath, traveler?" the guard asked from behind a concealing Stormcloak helm.

"I'm a merchant's apprentice on a buying expedition," I said, giving him my usual cover story. "It's my first time in Falkreath, so I was wondering if you could recommend an inn?" In my experience, the less time you gave someone to think about your identity before asking them questions, the more likely they were to answer your question without asking you any in return.

"Only inn around here is the Dead Man's Drink," the Stormcloak responded, true to form. "Place is run by an Imperial woman named Valga Vinicia, so you should feel right at home." I sighed inwardly; Stormcloaks could be so stereotypical. "Don't go causing any trouble while you're in town now. Wouldn't want someone to think you're a spy." He said it in a tone that sounded joking, but it was still a little threatening.

"Actually," I said, moving to the riskier part of my ploy, "I'm from Windhelm. I have a friend who joined the army last year and I heard he was stationed around here. Vigurl Deep-Water? Do you know him?"

"Afraid not," the soldier responded, his tone a little friendlier. "Most of the army's moved on to the front, along with most of my unit. He wasn't with us, though. Could be part of one of the units that got left behind to protect the city, or he could be out at the front with the main forces. You'd have to ask Jarl Dengeir or his brother Thadgeir; they're in charge of the Stormcloak garrison."

"Thanks for your information," I said cheerfully. Before I could separate myself from the soldier and enter town, he held up a hand.

"Hold on a minute," he said. I paused, worried that he had somehow seen through my story. Cold sweat ran down the back of my neck until he continued, "Have you seen a dog on the road into town?"

"A dog?" I repeated, not sure where this was going. "Um… no?"

"Town blacksmith saw a stray while he was out a while back," the guard explained. "Said he had an eye on it for a pet. He'll pay decent coin to anyone who finds it. If you keep an eye out, I'll introduce you—for a share, of course."

"I'll let you know if I see anything," I smiled. At least that was one promise I didn't have to worry about keeping. Who would offer a reward for a stray mutt? I shook the idea away and walked my horse into the town.

Falkreath was a small city with a depressing air about it. Unlike Whiterun, which had a beautiful design underneath all the damage done to it by the Stormcloaks, Falkreath seemed like it had always been an oppressive mudhole. The main street was cracked and swampy from the tromp of iron-shod boots, but only a few buildings showed any battle scars. It looked like Falkreath had either fallen very quickly, or that little resistance had been put up. Given that the wall didn't seem to completely encircle the city, I could only imagine that the "battle" for Falkreath hadn't been much of one.

A vast cemetery spread out from one side of town, which surprised me. Most Nords entombed their dead, while my Imperial ancestors had preferred cremation. I wondered if all of the markers represented small tombs, or if there were just people buried in the ground. The idea was strange to me, but then again I had never understood the Nord obsession with holding onto the corpses of loved ones. Bodies were just bodies—empty shells with nothing in them.

Except for the Night Mother, of course.

As I made my way to the inn, I thought about a course of action for my target. I knew that he lived near the city, that his name was Abbard, and that he was a local furrier. The little information Nazir had been able to find out about the man suggested that he was a Nord—which made sense, given his name—and that he was a seasoned hunter that had been operating in the Falkreath region for a decade or more. He didn't seem like the sort to draw the cries of the vengeful, but everyone had secrets.

"Welcome to Dead Man's Drink," the Imperial woman behind the counter said as I came in. I nodded to her and smiled pleasantly as I approached. Faking pleasantries had become easy since I joined the Dark Brotherhood.

"I need a room for two or three nights," I said. "If you could point me in the direction of the stables so I can put up my horse as well, I would appreciate it." She looked me up and down, a critical assessment that I hadn't seen from very many people in Skyrim.

"Since you don't know if it's two or three," she said sourly, "you're paying for three up front."

"So much for hospitality between Imperials," I muttered as I fished out the septims.

"We might be the same race, sonny," she said more cheerfully as she scooped the coins up, "but I can tell you're a Skyrim native. Might as well be a Nord for all I care."

"I wish the Nords outside thought that way," I said with a more sincere bitterness. "It would certainly make my life easier."

"Ha!" she laughed. "Just for putting up with an old woman's sour talk, dinner is on the house."

"Old woman?" I asked, pretending to look around in confusion. "There's an old woman around here?" I raised an eyebrow at the innkeeper, and she tittered like a schoolgirl. Gods, why couldn't I be this charming with women I actually cared about?

"Valga Vinicia," she said, holding out a hand.

"Aventus Aretino," I said, kissing the back of it, "originally of Windhelm."

"I imagine that you must have had a tough time of it, being from Ulfric Stormcloak's home city," she commiserated as she poured me a drink. I hadn't asked for one, but I certainly wasn't going to refuse.

"It could be difficult at times," I said. What an understatement. "I'm more interested in you, though. You're not originally from around here?"

"No," she said, shaking her head. "I was born in Cyrodiil, but my family came north during the Great War to escape the fighting." She laughed bitterly and poured a drink for herself. "Looks like it tracked me down, eh?"

"Well, a different war, perhaps…" I started.

"Don't know much of the history of your own jarl, do you?" she interrupted. I shook my head. Ulfric Stormcloak was like the Dark Brotherhood to me—enough of an actual factor in my life that I wasn't that interested in hearing about its history. "The Stormcloak Rebellion is just a continuation of the Forsworn Rebellion and the Markarth Incident—and that's just the tail end of the Great War, come to Skyrim."

"You seem like you know a lot about the region," I said.

"In Falkreath, if I don't know it, it's not worth knowing," she responded with a knife-edge smile.

"Then maybe you could help me," I replied. "I'm looking for a couple of people—a friend of mine who's with the army, and an old friend of my father…"

* * *

The Stormcloak camp outside of town butted up against the graveyard on one side and a makeshift war barricade on the other. It had clearly been laid out for more men than currently occupied it—perhaps five or ten times as many—and the tents had a ramshackle look about them that spoke of poor discipline. The ground was muddy with the late summer rains, and I could make out rotten stumps here and there where the Stormcloaks had torn down the trees to clear the ground for their camp.

Most of the army was either reinforcing at Fort Neugrad or out at the front in the Reach. Given the shoddy condition of the camp I was looking at—and the scruffy men and women in it—I could only guess that garrisoning a captured town was considered a punishment duty for Stormcloak soldiers. Still, it didn't seem that surprising to me; my impression of the Stormcloaks had always been that they were more interested in battle and conquest than actually protecting the people they gained control over.

I had left most of my weapons back at Dead Man's Drink, so I was armed with only a belt knife in case things went sour. Of course, if things went so badly wrong that I needed weapons in the middle of a Stormcloak camp, weapons wouldn't help me anyway. I suppose it worked out.

"Excuse me," I said to a bare-headed Nord carrying an armload of firewood toward the camp. He looked at me with a nasty expression, as though he had stepped in something foul, and spat to the side. "I'm trying to find a friend of mine who's in the army. His name's Vigurl Deep-Water."

"You know Vigurl?" he asked, his expression becoming wary. It seemed strange but I pushed on.

"We're friends from back in Windhelm," I repeated. "You know him then?"

"Oh, yeah," the man said, tossing down the pile of firewood onto the muddy earth. "Little bastard cheated me out of fifty septims last week." I sighed inwardly; that sounded like Vigurl, all right.

"That's a shame," I said, trying to keep my demeanor pleasant. "I'll be sure to tell him to stop doing that sort of thing if you can point the way to him."

"Are you mocking me, boy?" the soldier asked, pushing me back a step. I was shocked that he had laid hands on me, but the whiff I caught of his breath told me that mead might be involved. I started to shake my head "no," but he pushed me again, hard enough that I slipped in the mud and almost fell. "You Imperial piece of trash! What do you think you're doing, coming around true sons of Skyrim? You little smart ass!"

"Better a smart ass than a dumb ass," I snarled, finally giving into my temper. I took a step away from him and made my stance firmer in case he tried to push me again.

The soldier roared and took a swing at me. I ducked under his roundhouse, lifted my shoulder into his torso, and turned on my heel. The resulting force took him off his feet, flipped him ass over teakettle, and sent him sprawling into the mud at my feet. I backed away from him and got ready to take off running.

Instead, from behind me, I could hear the sounds of braying laughter. I turned to look, catching sight of half a dozen soldiers in battered armor watching from a stone's throw away. They must have come to watch when their fellow started getting up in my face. Now, all of them were slapping their knees and tilting their heads back to scream laughter at the blue summer sky.

"He sure showed you, Jolgar," came the jocular voice of Vigurl Deep-Water as he walked up from the group toward me. He was a little taller, a little broader, and he had a scar on his cheek that hadn't been there before, but otherwise he was still the red-haired, freckle-faced boy I knew from home. He walked past me and leaned down to help the older man up. To my surprise, Jolgar was laughing too as he stood up.

"Good man," he said once he was upright, clapping me on the shoulder. "Don't take shit from anyone." Then he wandered off again, whistling a tune I immediately recognized as "The Age of Oppression." The small crowd began to disburse as well, leaving me alone with Vigurl.

"Sorry about that," Vigurl said when he turned back to me. "Soldiers have a weird sense of humor."

"So you didn't actually cheat him out of fifty septims?" I asked warily.

"Actually, it was a hundred," Vigurl said with a devilish grin. "He only knows about fifty of it, though." I burst out laughing and reached out toward him so we could clasp forearms. Instead, he pulled me into a crushing embrace; it reminded me that Nords tended to hug, while Imperials just shook hands. "What brings you to Skyrim's asshole?" he finally asked me, turning to walk toward the nearby tents.

"I was in Whiterun a little while back and ran into Lasskar," I said, following along behind him. The devilish grin was replaced with a wide, genuine smile, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. I felt really good about things for the first time in days. "He asked me to look in on you if I was out this way. As fortune would have it…" I gestured broadly, taking in the whole of his muddy kingdom with my hands.

"By Talos, Aventus," he said, shaking his head and sitting down on a tree stump covered in tarp. "After all we did to you…" He hung his head and the smile ran from his face. "It shames me to think you would go so far to help someone who did you wrong."

"It's okay," I said, waving my hands nervously. "We were all kids back in Windhelm. I didn't get hurt, so I don't hold any hard feelings." Strangely enough, when I said it this time, it felt true.

"When we didn't hear from you for a while, I confronted Haakig about it," he continued as if he hadn't heard me. "It got pretty ugly. I threatened to turn him over to the city guards, but he swore on his mother's life he didn't know what happened to you." I must have looked as shocked as I felt because he laughed again after seeing my face. "It's true! Lasskar and me stopped hanging around him. Not long after, the whole gang fell apart. Last I heard, it was just Haakig and Saeda chumming together, pushing around the little kids and getting into trouble."

"Well, clearly he didn't kill me," I said, which drew a chuckle from Vigurl. "Actually, I managed to catch the eye of a traveling merchant while I was working down at the docks. He took me on as an apprentice, and I've been traveling all around Skyrim since then. In a couple more years, I'll be a journeyman. After that, who knows? I might even be able to start up my own business."

"That's great!" Vigurl said with what seemed like real enthusiasm. "Maybe after the war is over, you can give me a job."

"Not planning on being a career soldier?" I asked.

"By Talos, no!" Vigurl exclaimed. "Lasskar and me joined up as soon as the Stormcloaks would take us so we could send our mom two paychecks. Soldiers get decent pay, especially if you don't spend it all on mead and whores." He took a long pull off a waterskin and passed it to me. I shook my head and he took another. "The truth is, I've had my fill of blood and glory. I figure I've already done enough to get into Sovngarde someday—but I'm not looking to get there soon, if you understand me."

"I think I do," I said with a small smile. I too had the certainty of my soul's disposition. Someday, I would serve Sithis in the Void—but I looked forward to bearing a blade in the Night Mother's name for many years to come.

"Good!" he smiled, a shark's grin. "Since you're doing so well for yourself—and you see what deprivation in which I live—you can buy me dinner." I laughed and nodded my consent. It was a small price to pay for the good cheer seeing Vigurl again had brought me.

"Can you leave the camp?" I asked. "Lasskar was guarding the walls at Whiterun, and they had him on double shifts."

"We don't much care for that sort of thing around here," he admitted. "Thadgeir—that's the jarl's brother—doesn't much care what we do around here. He figures that the war's almost over, and that any place behind the front lines is pretty much safe."

"The Stormcloaks are doing that well?" I asked. Vigurl raised an eyebrow at me. "We don't get a lot of solid information back east," I continued. "We hear that 'the war's going well,' but Divines only know what that actually means."

"I'm not surprised," he said. "Jarl Ulfric's a canny one. He holds his cards close until it's time to play them, and he always comes out ahead. Did you hear he got the Dragonborn on his side?" His eyes lit up at the name of the mighty Ulfric Stormcloak and he seemed to sit up a little straighter, like he expected the Bear of Eastmarch to appear at having his name spoken.

I gritted my teeth and nodded. I'd heard the rumor. I also knew the truth of the matter. I managed to hold my tongue, though. No Stormcloak—no matter how friendly he seemed—would react well to the knowledge that his jarl was lying, and that the woman he publicly claimed to be the Dragonborn was an imposter.

"Well, he's got some sort of plan to finish up the job in the next year is what I heard," Vigurl said with a look of almost desperate sincerity. I pitied my old friend for a moment; his eyes were weary and his spirit seemed more damaged than his armor. He turned away from me, and he composed himself. "I just want to go home, Aventus."

"I understand," I said quietly. Nothing was worse than being away from home, with no idea when you would see it again.

* * *

Dinner with Vigurl had been more pleasant than I expected. We caught up on things, though most of my personal stories were fabrications. It gave me a good chance to flesh out my cover story, at least. I kept to a broad view of the truth where I could. Nazir had always said that no one had a good enough memory to make a perfect liar, so it was better to just embellish the truth whenever possible.

While Vigurl didn't like to spend his own coin on mead, he was happy enough to pack it away on someone else's tab. After we finished our meal, I nearly offered to help the staggering soldier back to his tent, but I had business of my own to attend to.

Once the inn had quieted down and the last of the lights I could see in town went out, I got ready for my excursion. I switched from my traveling clothes to my Dark Brotherhood leathers. They afforded a measure of protection as well as concealing my identity—plus, I didn't get to wear them as much as I wanted, so it was a good opportunity. They were a little tight, indicating I had gained another inch since the last time I wore them, but still good enough for a simple mission like this one. I strapped on my favored weapon—a solid steel mace with a flanged head—and belted on a couple of extra daggers for good measure.

After I finished gearing up, I put out my candle and gave my eyes a few minutes to adjust to the dark. Fortunately, it was a full moon out on a clear summer night, so there would be plenty of light for me to make my way. I propped open the window to my room by a few inches so that I could go in and out without going through the common areas. I was on the first floor and facing away from the road, perfect for my needs.

As I quietly exited the inn, I made my way toward the graveyard that stretched away from town like a vast field growing tombstones. The information I got from Valda indicated that my target lived in a hunting cabin not far into the woods on that side of town. He was basically just far enough out that you couldn't see his house from any public place—another lucky break, since it meant anything I did would be concealed from random passersby. It wasn't likely that there would be any in the middle of the night, but it was always better to play it safe.

I could see a bobbing torch on the edge of the cemetery near the Stormcloak camp, as well as a small fire. It looked like they weren't as completely undisciplined as I had thought, if they were at least keeping a watch with a banked fire and doing patrols. Fortunately, I didn't need to go within a hundred feet of them—and moving slowly and quietly, I probably could have walked within ten feet without being noticed.

It took less than half an hour for me to cross the vast graveyard and make my way into the thin forest nearby. The land around Falkreath was mostly rolling plains and some hills, so the ground was even and firm where it hadn't been churned up by the Stormcloaks. I relaxed a little once I was in the woods and picked up my pace.

Only a few more minutes passed before I caught sight of a small cabin. It had a front porch with a chair, a chopping block next to a cord of firewood, and a few strung up lines of fish for smoking. A narrow stream ran across the property, with a small bridge built over it for what looked like aesthetic purposes more than practical ones since I could have stepped across pretty easily. All the amenities of home.

I caught myself up short when I noticed that the main trail leading to the house was crossed by twine and rope at about shin-level. Following it back into the brush, I found that the strands were connected to several bundles of antlers that had been rigged as noisemakers. Our "seasoned hunter" seemed a little paranoid to be just a simple woodsman. That was good, in my book—fear indicated that he had something to be afraid of.

The house was dark as I approached it. There was only one door, and all of the windows were shuttered, so my only choice was to let myself in and try to be silent enough to avoid waking my target. I crept across the porch's old wooden slats without a creak or a whisper. I tested the doorknob; when I found it unlocked, I smiled under my cowl. Sometimes, it was just too easy.

I opened the door a narrow crack to look inside. The cabin was two rooms and an upstairs loft for storage. No one seemed to be in the main room, so I risked opening the door the rest of the way, letting myself in, and closing it behind me. The main room held a fireplace, a chair, a bookshelf covered in oddments, and a table that held maybe a dozen animal skins. Skinned rabbits and other small creatures dangled from a ceiling rafter, hung by their feet with twine. A few flies buzzed lazily around the room, which stank of blood and aged meat.

The smell of blood was nothing new to me, so I pressed on to the bedroom. I was surprised to find it empty, the unmade bed and soiled clothes littering the ground a further testimony to the slovenly habits of the owner. I wondered where said owner might be at this time of night. Out hunting maybe? It was a warm, clear night; it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that he just couldn't sleep and had gone out to catch a deer or something. I resolved to just hunker down and wait for him to get back. I wasn't in a hurry.

I climbed up the lone dresser and lifted myself to the bare rafters above the bed. Once I was settled in, I put my back against a beam and drew my mace. When he came in I would drop down, smash him once over the head, and that would be that.

By the time two hours had passed, I was looking forward to killing my target just a little more than usual. Finally, I heard the thump of the front door opening. I was surprised that no light came spilling in from the other room; I could only suppose that the hunter hadn't wanted to spoil his night vision with artificial light, and I mentally congratulated myself for being clever enough to pick a good hiding place ahead of time even as I tried to quietly stretch the kinks out of my muscles.

The door slammed closed behind him, and I could hear his blunt footsteps crossing the main room. He paused long enough to toss something heavy down before continuing on. He walked into the bedroom below me, and I paused at the sight of him. Abbard the furrier was a Nord, easily six and a half feet tall, wild-haired and built like a tree trunk. None of that was surprising.

No, the surprising part was that he was completely naked and covered in blood from head to toe.

He picked up some cloths from the floor and started cleaning himself off with them, wiping the blood away in tacky smears. He snorted and spat occasionally as he did so, to my great disgust. Once, something clattered on the ground when he spat; at first, I thought it was a tooth, but when he bent to pick it up I could see that it was actually a bone. He sniffed at it once and tossed it down on his nightstand, like he meant it to be a snack for later.

By then, I'd had enough.

I shifted my weight, preparing for my leap. The creak of the rafters was so soft that I could barely make it out myself. Abbard seemed to hear it, though. His head cocked at the sound, and he looked warily around as though aware that he was not alone. He tilted his face back slightly and breathed in, like he smelled something. At the moment he looked up into the rafters, I jumped out of them, bringing my mace down along the arc of my jump.

Abbard rolled to one side, alerted to my presence by his preternatural senses. My mace shattered his nightstand into flinders, and I hit the ground hard enough to jolt my knees and knock the wind out of me. In the moment it took me to recover my stance Abbard was on me, reaching for my face and snarling like an animal. I managed to bring my booted foot up into his crotch. When he gasped in pain and jerked away from me, I brought my mace up in a vicious swing aimed for his temple.

He caught it.

The hunter's grip was like an iron vise as he seized my mace. I pulled at it to loosen his grip or drag him off-balance, but it was like trying to move a tree. I looked up at him, trying to decide whether I should pull a knife or go hand-to-hand, when he started to change. Abbard's face ran like warm taffy, the broad brow and shaggy hair sloping back even as his teeth and lips jutted forward. His hand grew around the mace's head, the knuckles popping and cracking as the digits distorted from fingers into claws. Hair sprouted all over his body and he grew another six or eight inches.

The whole process only took a few seconds, even though it seemed to last forever. I felt my stomach drop. I had read enough books at this point to know what Abbard really was. I cursed Nazir's informants for not knowing this crucial fact about a man we were supposed to kill. At the same time, how could they have possibly known that he was a werewolf? I dropped the mace and decided that discretion was the better part of valor.

In short, I started running.

Abbard was blocking the only doorway out, but I figured that I could make it past him while he was still transforming if I was quick. As it turned out, I was wrong. The werewolf's backhand stroke took me in the chest and sent me flying through the window on the other side of the room. The good news was that I had managed to make it outside; the bad news was that it felt like he had broken one of my ribs and I had left my best weapon behind. My cowl had been ripped off, and I was missing a glove somehow.

The blood-chilling howl that ripped through the night got me on my feet and running for my life.

I didn't bother looking back as I raced for the graveyard. I doubted that Abbard could fit through the window in his current state, but I also didn't think that it would stop him from trying. Given his size and strength, a wall would just be a temporary inconvenience for him. The crashing noises behind me let me know that I was right—to my sorrow—and I picked up my speed.

My head was ringing and my chest burned from the blow Abbard had given me, and my legs still hurt from missing that first jump. The knowledge that Abbard would probably tear me limb from limb if he caught me made all the aches and pains seem a little less important.

I had made it maybe a hundred yards before I heard Abbard's baying and snarling behind me again. I veered off slightly to the right for one of the few aboveground tombs in the graveyard. Acting on instinct more than thought, I reached out to grab the side of an obelisk and used it to make a sharp right. Abbard sailed past me, jaws clashing, his weight and bulk too great to make such a hard turn. He still caught me what felt like a glancing blow; when I looked down, I saw great rents torn in my armor and blood running down my side. His claws had been so razor-sharp that I hadn't even felt them break the skin.

I could feel myself slowing from blood loss and fatigue as I pushed for the nearest tomb. Abbard had pulled himself up from where he had slipped and came howling after me again. I managed to reach the nearest tomb and push in through the unlocked doors. If the tomb had been sealed, it would have been over for me then and there. As it was, I barely had time to slam the doors shut and throw the bar across them before Abbard slammed into them. The heavy doors creaked and groaned as the werewolf bashed them. I knew it was only a matter of time before he came tearing into my hideout and ripped me to pieces, but I was nearly paralyzed with fear and pain.

As I watched the doors shudder and crack, a thought suddenly rushed into my fevered brain. Why was there a bar on the inside of a tomb?

Looking around, I could see that all of the niches on the walls were empty. The tomb hadn't yet been filled. Whoever owned the mausoleum would fill it up with their dead relatives before sealing it. That was all well and good, but how would someone get out once the tomb was barred? As I frantically searched for some sort of concealed exit, I could make out a few slivers of moonlight entering the tomb from low to the ground. I dropped to my hands and knees, and I saw a hole at the rear of the tomb, large enough for a man to crawl through. Outside was a stone block on rollers, ready to be fit into place and mortared once the last niche was filled and the doors barred from within.

I managed to scramble through on my hands and knees, knowing that I had only bought myself some time. Just as I was through, Abbard burst through the doors and leapt for me, missing by scant inches. I lunged away from the tomb, my brace of daggers catching on the edge of the hole and spinning away from me. Once I was through the hole, I tried to get back on my feet, but my legs refused to obey.

Abbard reached for me through the hole in the wall, but even with his limbs distorted to inhuman proportions, he couldn't quite reach. As I watched, his fur melted away and he became a man once more, now small enough to crawl through the hole after me. He smiled a ruthless, mad smile and began to snake through on his belly. He got stuck partway, still bigger than me in every dimension, but the blood and mud coating him made him slippery enough to start wiggling through.

I looked around for something to use as a weapon, since my daggers were what felt like a mile away. My eyes fell on the stone block on its greased risers. It was held in place by a wedge, and the risers held off the ground by wooden blocks. In desperation, I kicked one of the blocks away, hoping to use the stone as a barrier between Abbard and myself. The stone didn't budge even with one of its risers now at an angle, so I leaned forward and pulled the wedge away. The block started sliding down its risers, gaining speed quickly along the greased rails. When it hit the tilted one, a corner of the block dipped low enough to hit the ground. It tumbled once, then came to rest right on top of Abbard's hands, which were on the ground as he tried to pull himself free. He screamed as his hands were crushed under the block.

I took the opportunity to stand up, regaining some strength from his plight. I staggered over to where he was trying to writhe free and shot a vicious kick into his elbow, breaking the arm at the joint. He screeched a high note and I could see his flesh ripple as the change began, then failed as he had no room to grow into his alternate shape. Rather than give him the chance to break free and try again, I leaned down and hefted the stone block off the ground. I felt something in me tear with the strain as I lifted the block over my head. Abbard looked up at me in pain, but there was no fear on his face—only horrible, vicious anger.

Then I dropped the block on his head.

Once he stopped twitching, I slumped against the stone wall of the tomb. I put a hand to my wounds, trying to staunch the flow of blood. The cuts seemed long put not particularly deep, though the tearing I had felt when I lifted the block worried me. I tentatively tried to stand; something in my back and gut hurt. At least my target was dead. Now, I could go back to the inn, clean myself up, and drink a healing potion. That would suppress the hurt long enough to get back to Sanctuary and seek real medical attention.

I had barely managed to stagger to a steady position and recover my knives when three Stormcloak soldiers came running around the tomb. Two of them held torches and swords, while the third had a shield instead of a torch. Inwardly, I groaned; I was in no position to outrun three soldiers, and barely in any position to fight them. I wondered if they would bother arresting me.

"By Talos!" one of them shouted from behind his concealing helm. He caught a look at me and actually staggered back a step. "Dark Brotherhood!" he exclaimed.

"Filthy assassin's killed someone!" another shouted. He threw his torch on the ground and charged me, sword over his head like it was an axe.

I quick-drew one of my backup knives, stepped inside his reach, and stabbed him in the heart. The chisel-tipped blade punctured through his armor like it was paper. He gurgled his last breath and I pushed him away, grabbing his sword from his limp hand as he collapsed. The second one was already coming for me as well, so I clumsily sidestepped his equally clumsy thrust and used a two-handed grip on the blade to run him through. He went down screaming.

The last soldier threw down his sword and held his hands up as if to surrender. I drew my last knife and threw it into his unguarded neck. He dropped without a sound. I took the opportunity to pull the sword out of the still-living Stormcloak's stomach and plunge it into his chest. His screams finally stopped.

Once all three were dead, I took stock of my situation. Glancing around, I decided that I would just let whoever came upon all of this mess in the morning decide what had happened. If I was lucky, it would be days before anyone connected the headless naked corpse in the tomb with Abbard the hunter. Furriers went out alone for weeks at a time anyway, especially in summer and fall, so it was unlikely that anyone would miss him right away.

I staggered to each of the downed soldiers, recovering my knives, when I noticed something. In the light of the full moon, I could see a few wisps of red hair poking out of the helmet of the guard who had tried to surrender. I dropped to my knees, feeling numb and boneless. My nerveless fingers reached out to touch the helmet. I hesitated, not wanting to know the truth—but at the same time, needing to know.

The helmet came away, revealing the dead, sightless eyes of Vigurl Deep-Water. A few trickles of blood marred his chin but his face was unmarked. My knife had found a home directly in his throat, its tip piercing all the way through his spine. He had died instantly. I wrapped my hand around the hilt, thinking to pull it out, but the way his head jerked when I touched the knife made me recoil in horror.

Had he recognized me? Was he trying to surrender because he hadn't seen the face of an assassin—but the face of a friend?

I would never be able to ask him.

I looked down at my hands, covered in blood and gore. They felt filthy, so dirty that I would never get them clean. Something hollow and terrible and dark rose up in me, and I barely managed to turn my head before I vomited. I threw up until my stomach was empty, and then I dry heaved for long minutes afterward. I wanted to scream and weep, but I feared that if I started, I would never stop.

Something pragmatic and ugly in me took over then. I realized that people would eventually realize that Abbard was missing and connect him to the dead man in the tomb. If Vigurl turned up dead too, someone might eventually connect them together to the pleasant merchant's apprentice who was asking after both of them. Hurt as I was, I still needed to cover my tracks.

I pulled Abbard's heavy corpse free of the tomb, feeling the torn thing inside of me rip further as I did. I dragged him to a nearby open grave and rolled him in, then scooped earth onto his body with my bare hands until he was completely covered. Now there was no corpse to connect to Abbard at all; when someone finally went to check on him, they would find his house torn up—as though a wild animal had burst in and dragged him off.

I went back to the dead Stormcloaks and checked the dagger stuck in Vigurl's neck. Sure enough, it was a steel dagger close to the style used by Imperial soldiers. In the morning, when they were found, everyone would just assume that an Imperial ambush had caught them, or that they had stumbled onto an Imperial sabotage mission and been killed to keep them quiet. No one would connect it back to me.

Looking down at the corpse of my friend, I started to open my mouth to apologize, but then I remembered that Vigurl was dead. He wasn't in there anymore. I had killed him.

* * *

I managed to stagger back to the inn in a total haze, gulping down a healing potion and changing out of my bloody rags before collapsing onto the bed in exhaustion. In my dreams, Rolff Stone-Fist was strangling me, laughing as his hands wrung the life out of my body. I woke the next afternoon to find that my wounds were swollen and that I felt feverish. Thankfully, it seemed that my rib was only cracked, not broken, but it was still difficult to act normal as I checked out. I explained to Valda that I just wasn't feeling well and wanted to get back on the road before it got any worse.

"Probably a good thing," she said, nodding. "Did you hear about what happened last night?" I shook my head in the negative. "A whole squad of Stormcloaks got ambushed out in the graveyard. No one knows who did it—if it was Imperial soldiers or draugr or what. It's likely not safe for strangers in town just now. Stormcloaks will take any chance to lay the blame on folk they don't know, especially us Imperials."

I thanked her for the warning and left a few extra coins for all her help. I managed to get to my horse and ride out of town at a normal posture before the pain of my injuries overwhelmed me. I gulped down another precious healing potion and slumped over in the saddle to take some of the pressure off my back and aching guts.

The trip back was a blur, days passing without a thought in my head. My nights were worse. Rolff Stone-Fist lived in the night, and now he had company. The faces of the men and women I had killed danced behind him, mocking me. Only Vigurl didn't laugh; he just looked at me sadly, a knife still stuck in his neck. I would always wake up sweating and cold, then mount up on Spot as fast as I could and press on northward.

It was only as I laid eyes on Sanctuary again that I finally started to weep. I barely managed to get off my horse without falling. Spot meandered toward the stable, docile and well-trained. I curled up within sight of the Black Door, pulling my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them as I sobbed.

I had killed people before—a score of them. I had killed people who weren't my contracts before too. I had never killed anyone I thought was innocent before. Vigurl had been my friend. If he had attacked me, I might have killed him anyway with less regret, but he had tried to surrender. I had just taken it for the gesture of a desperate coward, but it was him reaching out to me as his friend. Had he called my name and I missed it in the heat of battle? Had I killed him before he could even speak? Had my name, frantic and pleading, been the last thing on his lips?

It was too much to bear.

I don't know how long I cried, but it was dark when I finally stopped. I could feel more tears deep inside me, welling up, when a soft hand touched the top of my head. I looked up, ashamed that someone had found me in such a state. Babette stood over me, her face soft and composed. She didn't say a word, just crouched down and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, which started me crying again.

We stayed that way for a long time. Finally, when the last of my weeping had passed, she stood up and held a hand out to me. I took it and shakily climbed to my feet. My sister led me along as though I were the small one, back toward our home. I was reminded of another summer night like this one. Had it only been a year ago? I felt so much older now.

Maybe I had grown up too fast.

* * *

…_to be continued…_


	22. Chapter 22: Rock Bottom

**Chapter 22: Rock Bottom**

Vigurl was still dead.

No matter how many days I laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, that immutable fact did not change. Vigurl Deep-Water was dead, and I had killed him. I had come to him in friendship, and I had killed him. He had been innocent, and I had killed him.

I squeezed my eyes shut to try and drive away the litany, but it kept echoing in my mind, over and over again. I wondered if this is what it felt like to be Cicero—if this is what it felt like to be mad. Could madmen know that they were mad?

"How are his wounds?" I could hear Hecate asking from the hallway outside. I had been given a private room in which to recuperate, not unlike when Grelod the Kind had beaten me almost to death. "Has he spoken yet?"

"I've treated his wounds as much as he will allow," Babette responded. All of my senses were keyed up way past normal. They almost sounded like I was standing next to them. I could feel every individual bead of sweat on my skin. "I think he has an internal injury. It's likely only a sprained back, but it could be internal bleeding too. I have no way of knowing, since he doesn't respond to any of the usual methods."

"What in Mara's name happened to him?" Hecate asked, her voice worried and desperate.

"I don't know, Listener," Babette said formally. Her voice seemed smaller than usual. Could she be worried about me? Why would she worry about someone who had hurt her so badly? I would ask her, but I couldn't seem to find my voice. "He won't speak to any of us. He let me bring him inside and put him to bed. He'll eat if we put food in his mouth, and he'll walk if we lead him. But he hasn't said a word in three days."

Three days. That's how long it had been. Time seemed to be slipping away from me.

"Gods dammit," Hecate hissed. "I would never have let him go on a contract if I thought he would get hurt like this."

"With all due respect, Listener," Babette said firmly, "with that attitude, he would never go on contract. Getting hurt, even killed, is a risk we all face in service to the Night Mother."

"I know, I know," she said. I could imagine her fluttering her hands nervously in front of her. I almost smiled, but my face didn't seem to want to move. "He's just… so young."

"He is," Babette replied. "But then again, all of you seem young to me."

"I suppose so," Hecate allowed. "Will he recover?"

"His body," the child-like vampire mused, "almost certainly. He's young and strong, and he has one of the best alchemists in Tamriel looking out for him. But his spirit is wounded too. I'm not sure any of us can do anything about that. He has to decide to come back to us."

"He'll be fine then," Hecate said confidently. "Aventus has the best heart of anyone I know."

"Hecate," Babette said sadly, finally calling the Listener by name, "I worry that he won't be fine, precisely because of that. A good heart isn't a benefit when you are an assassin. It's a hindrance."

"We'll see," was all the Listener could say in response.

Babette had said the choice to come back was mine. I didn't feel like I could make choices. And even then, even if I could put together the strength to do it, why would I come back if they were just going to send me away again?

No, better to just lay in bed and stare at the ceiling.

After all, Vigurl was still dead.

I had killed him.

* * *

"Dammit, boy," Garnag grumbled. "I know you can hear me."

The old orc leaned over me, his grizzled and weathered face looming across my view of the ceiling like a great green moon. He came close enough that I could smell his breath, heavy and warm on my face. Then he sighed and leaned away again, settling into the chair next to my bed with a groan. His bones popped and the chair creaked; I wasn't sure which sounded older.

"You've got to be in there somewhere," Garnag muttered. He sounded less sure this time, though.

I couldn't blame him. I wasn't sure that I was in here anymore myself.

"Any change?" came a lilting voice from out of my field of view.

"Like you care," Garnag growled.

"This one cares," came the voice again. It had been so low, so careful, that I hadn't recognized Meena at first. She usually spoke in a higher register, a voice that demanded to be heard from all around her. "This one is… fond of the kitten. He amuses Meena."

"Uh-huh," Garnag replied doubtfully. "Well, he's my friend, and I cared about him before he got hurt." Garnag paused. "He reminds me of how Chickpea used to be, actually."

"Really?" Meena asked, sounding surprised. I heard her pull a chair up. "Now this one is especially interested."

"Chickpea was always so serious," Garnag mused. "Aventus is a lot like that—focused, dedicated to the job, reverent to the Night Mother. I'm just worried that this… breakdown, or whatever it is… that it's some kind of warning that he's too much like Chickpea."

"You mean the moon-blessing?" the Khajiit said.

"What's that mean?" Garnag asked.

"The Keeper is blessed by the moons," she said as though it were self-evident. "Any cat worth her fur can tell someone touched by holy madness. It is one of the things that made the Keeper so attractive to this one." She snorted dismissively. "The kitten is not mad. He is simply weak."

"He's not weak," the old orc snarled. One of my hands twitched ever so slightly, but I couldn't make it move any further.

"Oh, his body is strong enough," Meena purred. "I have trained with him enough to know that. It is his spirit that is weak—his heart. He lacks…" She paused and made a noise back in her throat. "I don't know the word for it in human talk."

"Willpower?" Garnag asked.

"Something like that," she responded. "It is a word that means 'the ability to go against your own nature and still survive.'"

"Ahhh," Garnag sighed. "You mean conviction."

"Are you sure that is the word?" Meena asked. "I have only ever heard it at sentencing hearings."

"It's a homophone," Garnag explained.

"Like you?" she asked, sounding even more confused.

Garnag only growled in frustration. I could hear his heavy bootsteps as he stomped out of the room. Meena tittered to herself once he was gone. She took far too much delight in winding up the people around her. I didn't hear her stand again, not even with my hyperactive senses, but she was suddenly looming over me, her calico face and mismatched eyes looking down into my staring ones.

"Get better soon, kitten," she murmured. Then, as though embarrassed, she turned and walked quickly away.

* * *

"Why does this feel like a wake?" Vedave asked in hushed tones. On a normal day, at the same distance, I probably wouldn't have been able to hear him. Now, with my senses turned all the way up and my body nearly immobile, I could have heard a pin drop on the other side of Sanctuary.

"Shush," Anaril cautioned him. "Everything social feels like a wake to you. It's what you get for having an inherently morbid nature."

"I thought that was what you found attractive about me," Vedave returned. I could imagine the Dark Elf smiling his devilish grin as Anaril looked away and coughed into his fist. Sure enough, the cough came right on cue.

"That's enough of that," the prim High Elf insisted. "We're here to pay our respects."

"Now that sounds downright funereal," Vedave said morosely, his good humor vanishing as quickly as it had arrived. "Five days of lying there like a corpse. Now I hear he's not even eating or drinking."

"Gossiping within earshot of a sick brother is hardly becoming," came Elbent's gruff voice. I heard both of the elves gasp in shock; the rangy Breton was surprisingly silent when he wanted to be. "He can probably hear you."

"Please," Anaril said. It wasn't quite a sneer, but most things high elves said came off sounding slightly pretentious. "I doubt Aventus can hear us from this far away. He's not an elf, after all."

"I could hear you from that far," Elbent said, his voice sounding slightly offended.

"Well, it's to be expected," Anaril allowed graciously. "Bretons have elven blood going back centuries. It's also one of the reasons you people are so much longer-lived than other men."

"What do you mean 'you people'?" Elbent growled.

"No offense intended," Vedave quickly said. "We're just all on edge because of Aventus being..." The Dunmer paused for a moment, looking for the right word.

"He's dying," Elbent said brusquely. "We all know it. No need to be coy."

"Babette says he's recovering physically," Anaril insisted. "There was some internal bleeding, but she managed to make a clotting potion. With my help," he added. "It's just catatonia."

"If he doesn't eat or drink anything," Elbent replied, "he's still going to die."

"Babette has a plan for that," Anaril said, more quietly.

"She came to us about mystical possibilities," Vedave explained. "Magic isn't very good about subtle alterations to the mind, so we can't risk using illusions to change his emotional state. It could drive him permanently crazy or actually kill him outright."

"But if he doesn't recover on his own soon," Anaril continued, "she's going to have us try anyway."

"She would have asked Garnag," Vedave picked back up, "since his specialty is in illusions. She just thought that he might refuse because of sentimentality."

"Or tell the Listener," Anaril muttered.

"Just let the boy die in peace," the Breton hissed. "Have you considered that the reason he's wasting away is that maybe he doesn't want to live anymore?"

"He's our brother," Vedave hissed. "Would you have us give up on him?"

"Of course not," Elbent said immediately. "Look, I'm just saying…" He paused, apparently trying to decide what to say next. "I had a son once." His voice was so quiet that even I could barely hear him. "He got sick, and eventually he died. In between those things, I tried everything I could to keep him alive. I hired healers, surgeons, and wizards to try fixing him. None of them did anything but prolong his pain. He just kept getting worse and worse, until I finally realized that he was never going to get better—that only pain remained for him in this world."

"What happened then?" Vedave asked, his voice full of sympathy.

"How do you think the Brotherhood found me?" Elbent finally said, his voice thick and pained.

The three of them were quiet for a long time after that, until I finally heard them separate and leave without saying another word.

* * *

Geldii and Deesei had come and gone without saying a word in my presence. Both of them had come close enough that I could see them out of the corner of my eye. Deesei had held my hand for a few minutes, her scaly hand surprisingly warm against mine. Geldii had looked angry, though at what I wasn't sure. Maybe she was mad at me. Thinking had been difficult enough days ago when Hecate and Babette had been talking; now, everything was a fuzzy blur.

I think I was dying.

Light and darkness came and went. Sometimes I thought I could hear Babette stalking around, just out of sight. Other times, I was convinced that it was Rolff Stone-Fist, back from the grave and taunting me with his silence. Most of the time, I was just numb. After a while, I couldn't even remember why I was in my bed, or really where I was. There was just a gaping wound in my heart that ached—a little less every time I opened my eyes.

I welcomed the end of the pain.

It was almost totally dark when I woke up with Cicero looming over me. A single candle was lit on my nightstand, casting harsh shadows across the planes of the jester's angular face. His eyes were lambent in the reflected candlelight, the burning yellow of a jack-o'-lantern's eyes. His face was turned down in a scowl that threatened to tear the corners of his mouth right off of his face, and his breathing was heavy and erratic. He was perched on the edge of a chair that had been pulled up to my bed, leaning over me from it like a vulture on a branch.

"Finally awake, are we?" he rasped. I wasn't sure either way. Had I been asleep? Had I slept?

The jester's scowl only deepened when I didn't respond. He leaned forward enough that I could see myself reflected in his eyes.

"Why won't the boy answer?" he demanded. "Why so silent? Speak!" He shook all over, his flesh visibly rippling in loathing and disgust. Tears welled up at the corners of his eyes as he rocked back and forth, clutching at his knees with hands clenched so tightly that his knuckles were bone-white.

"The boy must talk!" he demanded in a high, wailing voice. "Silence, terrible silence! The boy may die, but at least do not go quietly! Scream! Weep! Beg! Anything! Anything! Speak, worm!" He was standing now, his hands balled up into fists and spittle flying from his lips. His voice seemed to deepen and become gravelly, almost like a different man talking out of Cicero's mouth. "So quiet. Like Mother. She never speaks to poor, loyal Cicero, no matter how long he waits. Only to the Listener, but there is no Listener…" He trailed off, as though confused.

"Yes, yes, there is a Listener now," he muttered like a man unsure of his own memories. "Sweet Hecate is the Listener. And Cicero is still the Keeper." He ran his hands through his long red hair, pulling his jester's cap free and throwing it on the ground. "But Garnag is here. How can Garnag be here? Garnag is dead! He went away and never came back! Is poor Cicero's mind playing tricks on him again?" He looked down into my eyes, his face twisted and pained.

"Please…" he begged in a quavering voice, the weakest in which I had ever heard him speak. "Please say something. Cicero… I… I don't know what's real. Sometimes I think I'm dead, suffering in the Void for my failures." He sat down, putting his face into his hands. "Sometimes I think I might still be in Cheydinhal—that I've gone mad and dreamed it all." He cocked his head back and laughed maniacally. "Cicero? Insane? That's madness!"

Finally, Cicero composed himself and stood up, kneeling briefly to pick up his cap. He dusted it off and set it back on his head, tucking his hair neatly behind his ears. He paused a moment to tug his gloves tighter. His face was set and grim as he leaned forward, tentatively reaching for me. He put his gloved hands to my neck, letting them settle there on either side of my throat like gentle falling leaves.

He kept them there for a long moment, as though trying to remember what he had intended to do. Then, with another shudder, he drifted his hands down to my blankets and brought them up under my chin. He tucked them in as carefully as he might have wrapped the Night Mother in her shrouds, then ran a gloved hand over the top of my head to brush my hair out of my eyes.

"Loyal Cicero will stay here until you fall asleep again," he said gently. "No one should be alone." Then he sat back on the chair next to the bed and folded his hands together in his lap.

And as far as I know, he stayed until I fell asleep again.

* * *

When I woke again, it was as dark as the Void. For a time, I wasn't even sure that I was conscious at all. I wasn't dreaming anymore when I slept; I was barely aware of the world around me when I was awake. My body was cold and dry, like a frozen desert.

I was empty.

The pain had gone. My guilt had gone. My memories had gone. I was alone.

At least, I thought I was alone until someone drew my blankets back and crawled into bed with me. In the dark, I couldn't see who it was, but I could tell that it was a woman. Her skin was warm against my chilled flesh. Someone had stripped me naked at some point, probably to clean my wounds. She was naked too, soft and smooth. Her hands snaked over my bare chest and under my back to hold me close to her. She rested her cheek against my shoulder, and drew up her knees slightly to wrap her legs around mine.

Her breath tickled my ear, the first real sensation I had registered in days. She brought her mouth close enough for her full lips to skim my earlobe. She stayed like that for long moments, her breathing filling my world. Her hand moved from my chest to caress my stomach in slow circles, a casually intimate gesture. She moved her lips to brush against mine, feather-light. They moved in such a way that it seemed like she was speaking to me, but no sound emerged.

Bit by bit, I felt my warmth returning. I started to become more aware of her presence, her body. More than that, her body started to make me more aware of my own.

She leaned away from me for a moment, and the sudden loss of warmth actually made me shiver. I could hear her take a sip of water from a glass on my nightstand. When she resumed her place next to me, she leaned over to kiss me again, more fully this time. She used her lips to part mine, then slowly released the water from her mouth into mine. I involuntarily swallowed, taking my first sips of water in what must have been a day or two. My throat burned suddenly, as though the sensation of water running down it had reminded my body that it was dying.

She repeated the gesture three or four more times, each time bringing me a little more fully back to myself. I still couldn't move, still couldn't think clearly—but I was completely conscious again. The pain was coming back too, and I was aware enough now to fear its return. It had a name, I knew that much. If I were to remember that name, I feared that I might go mad.

The woman's hands moved against my stomach and back, an insistent pressure that forced my breathing to deepen. Her warmth seeped into my bones, making my circulation improve. A piece at a time, I was returning to life. I was in pain, physical and mental alike. My back and gut ached where I had been injured, and my ribs throbbed.

The memory of being attacked by a werewolf flooded back to me all at once, and I shook all over with the recollection. I could feel the memories following it coming back too, rushing into me like a flood. I didn't want them. As I started to fall back into myself, I was begging for the silence again, for the end of pain. Dying was preferable to living if being alive felt like this.

Just as everything fell back into place and the screams started to well up in my throat again, the woman rolled on top of me and put all her weight on my chest with her hands, forcing the air out of my lungs. My wounds groaned with the pressure, and the scream died in my throat. I thrashed back and forth for a few moments, unable to draw enough breath to scream. Now that I was aware of being alive again, my lungs burned for air—against my will, my body was fighting for life.

She leaned up again, putting most of her weight on my lower body. Her hips ground against mine, and my body rebelled again, tensing with her motions against me. She rocked back and forth, a teasing movement that didn't quite deliver on its promises. I was gasping for breath again, but the screams had gone. Part of me wanted to give in to what she offered, to live again fully and accept the pleasures along with the pains. Tears trickled from the corners of my eyes, and not all of them were from my wounds.

The woman leaned down, her hands on either side of my chest to keep her weight off of my injured torso. Now that my screams were gone, she moved more gently, her breasts brushing against my chest as she brought her lips to my ear. My hands fluttered like ships on a storm-tossed sea, wanting to reach for her but unable to quite remember how.

When her lips moved again, she spoke the three words that I had been waiting to hear since my mother died.

Like a broken spell, my hands jerked away from the bed, reaching up to rest on her hips. I tilted back my head to look at her—really look at her. She leaned away from my ear and brought her head around so that we were eye-to-eye, our foreheads just touching. There was dim light leaking in from under the door now, just enough that I could see the shadowy outlines of her face. Her full lips brushed against mine, a promise of more if I could only claim it.

"You're not alone," Eiruki had assured me. Everyone I knew and cared for left me eventually—some by chance, and one at my own hands. Could I take an innocent life and still be myself? Could honor be compatible with the path of an assassin? Nazir, Cicero, Meena, Babette, Hecate—they had all told me that I would cut pieces of myself away by believing the way I did. What was left once all those pieces were gone?

As my thoughts started to retreat into paralysis, Eiruki leaned in again and bit my lip, hard enough to draw blood. The sharp pain was replaced by warm pleasure as she ran her hands along my sides. Those both came along with being alive.

I was alive. My mother was dead. Vigurl was dead. But I was alive. I had killed Vigurl Deep-Water. I hadn't meant to… but I would have done it anyway, even if I had known. My life as an assassin meant more to me than someone I used to know. He had seen my face, seen me kill his compatriots. His life was forfeit. I could have avoided it if I'd been more careful, less arrogant or less desperate. Dying now wouldn't bring him back. Giving up on my family—on myself—wouldn't bring him back.

Dying alone might be my fate someday—but not as long as I could fight. I was injured, dehydrated, hungry, and soul-sick. But I was alive. And I wasn't alone. It was time to start acting like it.

I leaned up off the bed, ignoring the pain of my wounds as they pulled and twisted. I crushed my lips against hers, breathing in her breath like a drowning man gasping for air. Her hips moved against mine, fulfilling the unspoken promise of her hands and lips. She gasped and bit my lip again as we joined our bodies together. I welcomed the pain, the sweet agony. I sat all the way up to wrap my arms around her; she pressed closer to me, her arms locked behind my back. We moved like the rolling waves of the sea, anchoring one another.

A long time later, when she had rolled off of me and curled up at my side once more, she brought her lips up to my ear and again whispered the three words I had needed most.

"You're not alone."

Her soft body and soft words followed me down into sleep.

* * *

I woke up with a fresh set of clothes folded on the chair next to my bed and new bandages wrapped around my ribs, tight enough to support the cracked one. I tried to sit up, but the pain in my lower back made me collapse back onto my pillows. I laid there for a few moments until the pain receded into a dull ache, then sat up again more slowly.

The door to my private room was open, and the smell of cooking food from somewhere in Sanctuary wafted to me, making my stomach rumble in emptiness. I rotated my legs off the bed and reached for my clothes. I was weak enough that even picking up a set of clothes made my arms shake and sweat bead on my brow. I took a few sips of water from the glass sitting on the nightstand, noting how my lower lip stung when I drank. I touched it and found a newer wound than my others—what felt like a bite mark.

My face twitched and it took me a moment to realize that I was smiling. It felt like it had been forever since the last time I smiled. I somehow managed to get into my clothes and stagger to my feet. I leaned heavily on the chair, then on the wall as I stumbled to the door. I was hungry and I wanted to see my family.

I staggered through the upper gallery of Sanctuary, distantly hearing the Dark Brotherhood gathering for breakfast. The usual cacophony of conversation was a dim shadow of its usual self, as though they were still in mourning. I didn't want to keep them long. Their happiness at seeing me alive—and I knew now that they would be happy—would be a better painkiller than anything Babette could brew in her laboratory. More than that, though, I just wanted to be with them again.

But first I had to see the one member of my family who definitely wouldn't be coming to breakfast.

The Night Mother's coffin was open when I arrived at her shrine. A few wildflowers were on the floor about three feet from the coffin. I shook my head at the sight, still grinning. Eiruki was eventually going to go too far with this sort of thing, and I wouldn't always be around to placate Cicero. Still, it was just something cute and fond at the moment. I shakily knelt down in front of the coffin, pocketing the flowers to keep the peace for another day, before I started praying.

"Sweet Mother, sweet Mother," I whispered, my throat still raw.

"Aventus?" I heard from behind me before I could go any further. I turned and looked over my shoulder to see Cicero standing in the doorway, a bundle of healthy-looking wildflowers in his hands. He sat them down on one of the stands next to the door, then stumbled toward me, looking like a lost child more than an assassin almost three decades my senior. "Are you real?" he asked.

I stood up shakily, almost falling. Cicero was there in an instant to catch me. I leaned heavily on him, squeezing his upper arm to reassure him.

"I'm real," I rasped. "I'm alive."

Cicero's face lit up, and his broad smile was infectious. He let go of me and spun in a circle, jumping up to click his heels before taking my arm again. He tilted his head back and laughed, and I found myself holding onto him and laughing too. After a few moments, he turned to look at the Night Mother, a sheepish expression on his face.

"You came to see Mother first?" he asked. I nodded, and his smile became a sober, serious one. He embraced me again, a gesture of pride so personal that it made my heart ache. "What can I do?" he finally asked after breaking the embrace.

"You could let Nazir know to set an extra plate," I said with a wan smile. I was hungrier than I could remember being since… Well, since Windhelm. Cicero nodded enthusiastically and ran off, hooting with laughter.

"Aventus is awake!" I could hear him shouting as he bounded out into the hallway. "The boy is awake!"

Once he was gone, I turned back to the Night Mother. I bowed formally before saying the only words I could think of that summed up all I wanted to say.

"Thank you, Mother," I said. She didn't respond, but I hadn't expected her to.

By the time I made my way out to the main room, the Brotherhood had all gathered together. Even the ones who didn't habitually take breakfast were there. Babette was standing at the top of the stairs in her sleeping gown, obviously having been rousted out of bed by Cicero's shouting. I walked up to her and smiled. She reached out and took my hands, looking delightfully awkward as I pulled her in for a hug. The Brotherhood cheered and applauded as I finally broke our embrace.

As one, they rushed to the bottom of the stairs, waiting for me with smiles and pats on the back and warm embraces. I was still hungry, but it could wait for a few minutes more. Their words were overlapping babble and well-wishes, to the point that I could barely make out anything, but that was okay. Garnag clapped me on the back hard enough that my rib flared in pain, and Nazir grabbed my upper arms in greeting hard enough to make my muscles groan. Hecate pushed through the crowd and threw her arms around me, crushing me deeply enough that my wounds ached—but I didn't mind at all.

Eiruki was the last of the Brotherhood to approach me, her shy smile and downcast eyes giving no hint of what had passed between us the night before. She clasped her hands together in front of her, making it my responsibility to reach out to her. As I wrapped her in my arms, she brought her lips up to my ear. Softer than anyone could have heard, she whispered to me again.

"It didn't mean anything," she insisted.

"Yes, it did," I replied, just as quietly. "It meant everything."

I leaned away from her and smiled. Her shy smile became something broader and warmer as we both acknowledged that we didn't owe one another anything. It was what it was—everything and nothing all at once. She unclasped her hands and threw her arms around me, to the cheers and applause of the others. Even Babette was smiling when I let Eiruki go and walked away. I staggered to the table, sitting down at my usual spot.

"Who do I have to kill around here to get something to eat?" I asked.

My family came streaming back to the table as Cicero came rushing back with plates full of food. Nazir didn't even scold him for being in the kitchen without supervision. They all demanded some of my attention, wanting to know what had happened to me. I let them stew for a little while as I enjoyed my breakfast, relishing the flavors and textures of Nazir's cooking as much as I enjoyed the babble and noise of my family's happy voices.

It was good to be alive.

* * *

…_to be concluded…_


	23. Chapter 23: Goodbye is a Second Chance

**Chapter 23: Goodbye is a Second Chance**

My bags were packed. The few things I owned that I wasn't taking with me were safely stored in one of the back rooms of Sanctuary. I had put most of my money into a lockbox and put it in with the rest of my things. I didn't think anyone would steal from me—not in the Dark Brotherhood—but I wanted to make sure that skeevers didn't run off with my septims to line their nests. I was only bringing a couple of purses of coins with me for expenses and emergencies.

I'd made sure to neatly make my bed; after all, it would probably be someone else's bed soon enough. That gave me a twinge to think about. I hadn't slept in it much for the last week while I was recovering from my injuries and a nervous breakdown, but I'd had the same bed for two years, ever since I came to Sanctuary. In theory, anyone without a private room—which was most of the Brotherhood—could sleep in any bed that wasn't occupied when they came back from a contract. In practice, everyone had their own preferred sleeping space.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and ran my hand along the frame. On the underside of the wooden headboard, I could feel the rough place where I had carved my initials my first week of living in Sanctuary, before I had really understood the whole "communal living" thing.

"Checking for a hidden knife?" Meena asked me as she walked into the common room and sat down on a bed across from mine. Meena was one of the few who actually followed the theory of the communal sleeping arrangement. Whenever she got back from wherever she had been, she just flopped into any unoccupied bed and passed out. Sometimes, she didn't bother with the "unoccupied" part.

"No," I said, pulling my hand back, "I've already packed all my weapons away." I stood and stretched, picking up the leather travel pack from the floor. "Nazir says I shouldn't need any while I'm at college anyway."

"Don't sound so disappointed, kitten," Meena said sympathetically. "In this one's experience, you can always find a good excuse to kill someone if you're looking hard enough." She smiled her impish cat-smile and I walked over to give her a hug.

"Thank you, sister," I said formally. She pushed me away, looking actually embarrassed for the first time since I had met her.

"This one accepts your gratitude," she muttered. "But don't expect another hug in front of the others. This one would never live it down."

"Of course not," I replied in mock-sincerity. The Khajiit nodded graciously and sauntered back out of the room. Once she was gone I considered if she had only come here to say goodbye privately; it seemed too sentimental for her, but she hadn't done anything else while she was here. Even after two years, Meena was the sibling I knew the least.

I shook my head to clear it out and shouldered my travel bag. Most of my possessions were in a big trunk that was already loaded onto a wagon, but the bag held a few things to get me through the next few days on the road. It held a couple of changes of clothes, some wrapped bread and cheese, an emergency knife, a firebox… all things that I had kicked myself for not having when I left Riften the first time.

I looked at the bed one last time. It would still be here when I got back, but it might not be mine anymore. I wondered if that applied to me too. Would I still belong when I came back? I knew that my family loved me, but I had come to understand that love wasn't like a stone, permanent and unchanging. Love was like a garden; if you didn't tend it, it died. Would their love for me wither without me here?

It was almost hilarious to think about, really. I could go into battle without a thought for my own life, but the idea of being alone for two years made me freeze up and want to cry. I shook myself again to try and clear out the introspective thoughts. Whether I wanted to go or not, the decision had been made. I would go to Solitude and become a better servant of the Night Mother, even if I still didn't understand how training to become a bard would do that. Hecate was the Listener; her decisions weren't always perfect, but they usually worked out for the best. If she wanted this for me, then I would do it.

I knew I was still stalling, so I finally turned away from the bed—just _the_ bed, not _my_ bed anymore—and walked out of the common room, into the future.

It was time.

* * *

"Ah!" cried the Fool of Hearts. "Here he is! Cicero was beginning to worry that the boy had decided he was too hurt to travel!" The jester capered toward me, a jaunty smile on his face. I was expecting him to clap me on the back, regardless of the fact that I still had cracked ribs and some kind of pulled muscle, but instead he gingerly took my backpack off my shoulder and slung it over his own.

"Thanks," I murmured. I still envied Cicero's relationship with Hecate, and I still feared him a little bit—but I remembered him staying by my side when everyone else had come and gone like the breeze.

When everyone thought I was dying, only Cicero stayed. I could forgive that of Hecate—I could forgive her nearly anything—but I was still angry at Nazir for not even coming to see me. Even Meena had poked her head in for a little while when she thought I couldn't hear her, and Garnag had stayed longer than anyone but Cicero. I suppose I had just thought that Nazir would care more than he had.

"Are you ready?" Hecate asked as she breezed up and swept me into a deep hug. One positive result of my near-death experience was that Hecate was more willing to show her affection for me now. I didn't even mind that she was making my ribs ache.

"As ready as I'm ever going to be," I responded with my best fake smile. Inside, I was still close to tears, but it was more manageable now.

"Well, Nazir made a hearty breakfast for you," she said. "Go eat up, and as soon as you're done, we can head out."

"Would it be okay if I took some time to say my goodbyes after breakfast?" I asked.

"I suppose so," Hecate allowed, though her expression said that she thought it a strange thing to do. "It's not like you'll be away forever. But if you want to, we can take a little time." I hugged her back in thanks and headed for the main hall. Cicero trailed after me, keeping my pack on his shoulder.

"Sweet Hecate means well," Cicero smiled, "but it does you credit that you want to say your goodbyes. You never know what's going to happen, after all." His face turned from a jaunty smile to a hanging tragedy mask in second. "You could go out for a little while and when you get back, everyone is dead! It wouldn't be the first time…"

"I'm sure it will be okay, Cicero," I assured him, worried that he would burst into tears from his expression.

"I'm just saying," he insisted, his expression becoming more neutral, "that it's always good to treat each greeting and departure like they could be your last. You never know ahead of time how much time you have left with someone." He looked at me very seriously, his eyes distant and pained. "Never put things off if you can help it, Aventus. Not hello, not goodbye, and not I-love-you."

"You called me by my name," I said, slightly stunned. "You've never done that before."

"Cicero doesn't know what the boy means," he chirped, his tone teasing. "The Keeper has surely called the boy by his name before. It isn't poor Cicero's fault that the boy's memory is faulty. And at such a young age!"

I shook my head and sighed as we stepped into the main hall. Several of the Brotherhood were gathered over breakfast, though Babette and Nazir were missing. Given the sounds drifting out of the kitchen, I figured that Nazir was finishing up breakfast, and it was rare for Babette to be awake after dawn. I would be sad to leave without seeing Babette, especially since it seemed like we were finally getting back on good terms, but if she didn't want to be here for it then I wasn't about to wake her up.

Geldii nodded to me as I walked up to my usual spot at the table, and Deesei came over to sit next to me.

"Welcome back to the living, landstrider," she said with what I guessed passed for a smile from an Argonian. "Seems a shame that you'll be leaving just as you're up and about."

"Thanks, Deesei," I said sincerely. "I'd rather take a few more days to heal up, honestly. But apparently the semester starts next week and I need to be there when it starts to make a good impression. Can't seem like a slacker from day one, after all."

"No," she agreed, "that comes later." I laughed and she patted my hand before returning to her own seat.

Looking around, I noticed that everyone else had already eaten, their plates and bowls neatly stacked up together at the end of the table.

"Nothing left for me?" I asked Vedave as he stood up from his seat.

"Just the opposite," the Dark Elf responded. "Nazir made the rest of us finish early so he could make you something special. Given how good a cook our local Redguard is, I'm almost envious." He smiled and linked arms with Anaril, who nodded at me pleasantly.

"Travel safely, brother," Anaril said. "Kill well and kill often."

"I don't know how much killing I'll get to do while I'm gone," I replied, "but thank you for the sentiment." The High Elf nodded graciously, then he and Vedave swept out of the room.

Elbent waited until they were gone before making his way over to me. The Breton had a perpetual scowl and a face that looked like his last acquaintance with a razor was some days prior but he was one of our best social gadflies, able to make connections with ease. He had been invaluable in rebuilding Nazir's spy networks since he had joined, as well as making us contacts at every level of society in Skyrim. Having heard about his son's tragic death, I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for him too.

"Hecate had me set you up an emergency stash," he said without preamble. "You'll be in Solitude under your own name, so I had an account set up for you at the Imperial exchequer's office."

"Ex-checker?" I asked.

"Exchequer," he responded, correcting my pronunciation. "It's the office that runs the Imperial postal service and mint here in Skyrim. Every province has one. They bank money for the nobility, invest it in capital ventures, and collect the profits while also charging fees to their customers to keep their money safe. When the Empire declares that new coins be minted, the exchequer holds onto the original casts for the coins and registers the official weight of the septim." Seeing my blank look, Elbent sighed. "They make money," he concluded.

"Ohhhhhhh," I sighed, finally getting it.

"Anyway," he coughed, "if you need funds for your schooling, you've got some money set away legally at the exchequer's office. You'll just have to give them your name and this number." He handed me a piece of paper with a long number written on it in neat, blocky numerals.

"Thanks," I said, offering him my hand. He shook it amicably. As he started to walk off, I hesitated, then finally spoke again. "I'm sorry about your son."

"You heard that?" he asked without looking back at me.

"Yeah," I replied, a little sheepishly.

"It was a long time ago," he finally said, his voice thick. He turned to look back at me with a thin smile that would have been called a grimace on anyone else's face. "At least I can rub it in those snooty elves' faces that you really could hear us." Then he walked out of the common room.

I was worried that I had upset him, but I didn't have time to think about it before noticing that I was now alone in the main hall with Eiruki. She was sitting a ways down the table from me, looking down as usual with her hair half-covering her face. I waved to her, which only made her hunch down in her chair further. I smiled to myself and shook my head; I didn't understand why Eiruki was so shy, especially with me—and especially after what had happened between us a few days ago.

Nazir came walking into the main hall with a tray, which Eiruki took as an opportunity to stand up. She walked past me on her way out of the room, pausing for a moment before Nazir got to the table. She leaned down and kissed me gently on the cheek, then jerked back as though burned.

"Kill well and kill often, Aventus," she whispered in her usual barely-audible tones.

"Kill well and kill often, sister," I replied formally. I reached out and took her hand for just a moment, squeezing it affectionately. She returned the gesture before pulling away and taking off.

"I'm glad to see you took my advice with that one," Nazir rumbled as he started moving plates and bowls from the tray to the table.

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," I returned, perhaps more coldly than I had meant to.

"Either way," Nazir continued, not seeming to notice my tone, "I hope you enjoy breakfast. It's the last time you'll be getting my cooking for a while, so I wanted to make something special." I looked down at the spread; none of it was the usual stuff I had come to expect from Nazir's tasty, filling breakfasts.

"What's all this?" I asked.

"Well, you see," he said, putting down a plate for himself and sitting down, "I always do my best when I cook for the family. But there are limitations on the kind of things you can make when you're cooking for a dozen people." He gestured at the plates in front of us. "This is a traditional Redguard breakfast: flatbread with hummus, lentil soup, jibnah fatayer, ful, and labneh."

"You had me up until that last bit," I admitted.

"_Labneh_ is a kind of cream made with mint," he explained. "You serve it with olives and spread it on the flatbread. A _fatayer_ is a kind of pastry; _jibnah_ means it's stuffed with cheese and spinach. Ful is two kinds of beans mashed and cooked together with garlic and lemon."

"Isn't that a little heavy for breakfast?" I asked.

"Not in Hammerfell," Nazir laughed. "If you're from the working class, breakfast is supposed to carry you through to mid-afternoon when we have lunch. Dinner is our lightest meal, since it's considered unhealthy to go to sleep with a full stomach." He began to spread something on the flatbread, which I emulated since I wasn't entirely sure which dish was which from his explanation.

"It's good!" I exclaimed after taking my first bite. I was shocked not because it was good—Nazir's food was always good—but at how much better than usual it was. If Nazir's usual dishes were a delight, this meal was like the Divines themselves had blessed it.

"I'm glad you like it," he said with a smile. "This sort of food is hard to cook for more than a couple of people at a time."

"Nazir," I started, putting my food down for a moment, "is this an apology for not visiting me while I was hurt?"

"Nothing to apologize for," he replied between mouthfuls. "I just wanted to give you a good meal for the road." He looked at me and wiped his mouth.

"Then why didn't you come see me?" I pushed. "Everyone else did, at least for a little while."

"You only visit people like that when you think they're going to die," Nazir said. "I never thought you were going to die." He smiled and patted my shoulder. "I'll admit you did give me a scare there near the end. But I never thought you would die."

I turned away from the Redguard for a moment so that he wouldn't see how close to tears I was. I wiped my eyes with a napkin and turned back to the spread Nazir had laid out for me.

"So how do you eat this?" I asked, pointing at something dark in a bowl.

"Carefully," Nazir responded, "as you should with all good meals."

We laughed together, just the two of us, enjoying a good meal on my last day in Sanctuary for a long time to come. Maybe it was because I had spent so much time hungry when I was younger, but I never felt more at home than when I was sharing food with my family.

* * *

"Do you have everything you'll need?" Hecate asked as she checked the ropes holding down my trunk one last time.

"As far as I know," I responded. She looked at me crossly as though I were being intentionally difficult. "I'm just saying, you never know for sure you have everything you need until the trip is over. I have everything I think I'll need…"

"Good enough!" she responded with mock-cheer. Hecate's mood had soured as we finished packing up the wagon. I guessed that the fact I was really leaving was sinking in for her.

"I'll say my last goodbyes," I said, "and then I'll grab Nazir."

"Did I not mention?" she asked. "Nazir won't be going with you to Solitude." I sighed; it was pretty typical for Hecate to change plans at the last minute without letting anyone know.

"Am I going alone?" I asked. I didn't mind, really. It was a long trip, but I'd traveled alone before.

"I'm going with you," she said. "We've had some last-minute information come in about the civil war that makes it important for me to meet with Jarl Elisif. Cicero has to stay here to oil the Night Mother, or he'd be coming along too."

"Will I get to meet Elisif?" I asked. I'd heard that the widow of High King Torygg was very pretty, which was why she bore the title "the Fair."

"I think you'll have to," Hecate replied.

"What do you mean?" I asked. Everything was getting confused for me with these last-minute changes.

"Well, you see…" she dithered as she fiddled with the ropes. "I got you into the Bard's College as a late addition by pulling some strings with the headmaster, Viarmo. He's an old acquaintance. But I had to do that as Diana the Dragonborn. Now that this 'false Dragonborn' is ruining my good name—my old name—I have to put in an appearance at the Blue Palace to let everyone know that it's not really me working with Ulfric Stormcloak."

"That makes sense," I allowed, walking to keep up with her as she nervously circled the wagon.

"Since we enrolled you under your real name," she continued, "you're connected with Diana the Dragonborn now. So you'll have to be extra careful about not letting on that you're with the Dark Brotherhood."

"Well, I wasn't planning on drawing any attention anyway," I interrupted. "It's not like I was going to go running across rooftops in my shrouded armor."

"The problem is," she went on like she hadn't heard me, "Viarmo wanted to know how you're connected to me." She stopped and looked at me before the words came rushing out of her. "I didn't know what else to say so I told him that you're my adopted son and the reason I went missing for two years is that I got married and started a family and spent a bunch of time at High Hrothgar meditating and I'm back now because of hearing about the false Dragonborn and he kind of went and made a big deal about it to Elisif because she was upset about me siding with her husband's killer and..." She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment to calm down. She finally continued, more slowly, "So now everyone in the jarl's court thinks that you're my adopted son."

"Hecate," I said carefully, "could you repeat that in a way that makes sense?"

"Aventus," she responded seriously, "if people outside the court were to find out that you are my adopted son, you could be targeted by my enemies. So Jarl Elisif and her advisors will know, but you are going to have to keep it a secret from everyone else. Viarmo has said that you will receive no special treatment from him—and even the other instructors will not know. But you are going to have to be very careful about not letting people know about our relationship."

"No problem," I said with real nonchalance. "I don't plan on making any friends or anything, so it's not like I have to worry about accidentally telling anyone. And since I won't be going on contracts while I'm in Solitude, I don't have to worry about getting caught." I brushed my hands together in a show of confidence. "Easy peasy."

"Let's hope so," Hecate said. "In my experience, these things have a way of getting out of hand all too quickly."

* * *

Everything was secured, food was packed on the wagon, and my family had come outside for one last goodbye. Nazir, Garnag, Meena and Cicero had all hugged me at least a couple of times each, despite Meena seeming embarrassed by the show of affection. The sun was nearly overhead, but the air was still chill and brisk with the oncoming autumn. It was Hearthfire, and time for me to go.

"I'll miss all of you," I said tearfully once Nazir had let me go.

"It's not that long," Nazir insisted. "And the Listener will be up to Solitude every now and again for political reasons. Who knows? I might even find an excuse to visit myself."

"I hope so," I replied.

"Almost forgot," Nazir said with an expression that told me he hadn't actually forgotten anything. "When you get to Solitude and have some privacy, check your travel chest. I think you'll find some surprises."

"A present?" I asked.

"Let's call it security," he said. "You shouldn't need to exercise your craft while you're away at school, but better to have something and not need it…"

"Than to need it and not have it," I finished, and we both laughed.

"That reminds me," Hecate said, pulling a piece of paper out of her pocket. "Babette asked me to give you this right before we left." I took it from her and read it aloud, since Cicero was looking at it over my shoulder anyway.

"Aventus," it started, "despite everything, I find that I will miss you—enough that if I have to watch you go, I might actually become less than composed. As no one wants that, I will suffice with a letter saying that I will be here when you come back. Since you are not especially good at looking out for yourself—as our all too brief association has proven—I am making a loan to you of something precious to me that will help keep you safe. It is only a loan. I WILL WANT IT BACK. If you look to the wagon, you should see it now."

I was a bit confused. If it were just some potions or something, I couldn't see how I would give them back to her. When I turned to look at the wagon, on a spot that had been empty before, Pavot was sitting comfortably, his long black tongue lolling out of his open mouth. He gave me a look as if to say "I thought we were going" and then settled in to rest his head on his paws.

"Is it okay?" I asked Hecate. "Will they let me bring him?"

"I don't see why not," she said. "Lots of people have pets."

"Not full-grown ice wolves," I replied.

Looking at Pavot, I marveled at how big he had gotten. In only a year and a half, he had filled out to almost two hundred pounds and somewhere near six feet long. He was bigger than I was, though I still had a little ways to go before I finished growing. His thick white pelt was shaggy as it was filling in for the coming cold, and his massive fangs could easily shatter bone. I had taken him hunting often enough to realize that there were few things in the wilds of Skyrim that could stand up to an angry ice wolf—up to and including bears.

"We'll work something out," Hecate said, and I believed her. Not everything Hecate did was perfect, but she usually made things work out—somehow.

"Tell Babette thanks for me," I said to Nazir with a smile.

"Tell her yourself when you get home," he retorted.

I mounted up onto the wagon, pausing a moment to scratch Pavot behind the ears. Hecate climbed up with me and took the reins. I raised an eyebrow at her, wondering if she even knew how to drive a wagon, but she only shrugged.

"We miss you already!" Cicero shouted as the wagon began to move. "Don't forget poor Cicero!"

I waved at the jester as he jumped up and down, then turned to look forward. I was afraid that if I kept looking back, I might just jump off the wagon and run back to them—to my family. They were everything I had ever wanted, after all. But they would be there when I got home.

I turned my eyes forward and looked to the future.

* * *

It was after dark when we stopped the wagon, pulling it over to the side of the road. There was plenty of room in the back for our bedrolls so we didn't bother going to the trouble of making a camp. My breath steamed in the cold autumn air as I bundled up and got ready to bed down for the night. After all the packing and goodbyes and excitement of the day, I was exhausted. Pavot seemed perfectly willing to share his heat with me; after running alongside the wagon for most of the day, I could only imagine that he was just as tired as I was.

Hecate was sitting up with her back pressed against the sidewall of the wagon, a lantern next to her and a book in her hand. She looked over to me as I was struggling to lay out my sleeping bag, and with an impish grin patted her lap.

"Don't you think I'm a little old to sit on your lap?" I asked, my teeth chattering slightly.

"But not old enough that you can't put your head on my lap while you sleep," she returned. At my dubious look, she assured me, "When I'm ready to sleep, I'll move you as quietly as possible."

"Okay then," I said, enjoying any chance to be close to the Listener.

I came over and laid my head on her thigh, then closed the sleeping bag around me. Pavot trotted over and curled his big, furry flank up against me, his body head immediately chasing away the chill of the autumn night. Hecate put a warm hand on my brow, playing with my hair as sleep overcame me.

* * *

Sometime during the night I started half-awake, shadows pursuing me up out of sleep. I shuddered with barely-remembered nightmares and turned to look up at the sky. The twin moons hung full in the black, tinged orange from the harvest season. I heard myself whimper slightly, and I couldn't quite remember where I was or what was going on.

"It's okay," a woman's voice soothed me. "It'll be fine. I'm right here."

"Mom?" I asked, still more asleep than awake.

"Yes, sweetheart," the woman said. "I'm here. You're not alone."

"I love you, mom," I muttered, sleep already reclaiming me.

"I love you too, Aventus," she replied.

The rest of the night was calm and easy, one of the best nights of sleep I'd ever had.

**THE END**

* * *

**Author's Note:** Thank you all for reading. It's been my pleasure to write the story of Aventus Aretino, the littlest assassin. I'm so grateful for the reviews that people have left, as well as all of the encouragement and praise. Even just a note to let me know you're reading my story helps keep me going when things are tough. Even though I'm a professional writer, this is the longest piece of fiction I've ever completed. Sometimes it was hard to convince myself to continue—real life getting in the way, being busy, that sort of thing—but whenever I saw that people actually cared about what I had to say, I found the heart to keep on going. So thank you all.

Also, many thanks to my lovely wife, Heiwako, who started all of this with a little story some of you might have read—_Darkness Rises When Silence Dies_. That fiction and its fantastic sequel, _For the Future of Skyrim_, inspired me as a writer in ways that very little else has ever done. Moreover, her ridiculously prolific writing pace shamed me into becoming a more efficient writer in order to keep up. So, Heiwako: I love you.

Finally, I want to let everyone know that even though _Innocence Lost_ is over, the story of Aventus Aretino isn't done yet. I'll be continuing his tale in a new fiction, entitled _The Age of Assassins_, picking up with his arrival at Solitude for his training as a bard. A lot of questions will be answered—including whatever happened to the other kids at Honorhall Orphanage. Please keep reading, and I hope you enjoy _The Age of Assassins_ as much as _Innocence Lost_.


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